Shani Louk, the young German-Israeli whose half-naked and motionless body was displayed as a trophy by Hamas gunmen in an atrocious viral video on the first day of the attack on Israel, is dead, her mother, Ricarda Louk, reported this Monday to various German media.
“Yesterday we received the message that my daughter is not alive,” said the mother, a German who has lived in Israel for 30 years. Shani’s sister, Adi Louk, reported on Instagram “with great sadness of the death of my sister.” The 22-year-old tattoo artist had disappeared on Saturday, October 7, when Hamas terrorists attacked the rave festival in Israel at dawn in which she and hundreds of young people were participating.
Shani Louk’s body has not yet been located, her mother informed German media. A splinter of bone from the skull was found, from which a DNA sample was taken. Her parents had long ago provided the authorities with the genetic material necessary to make the comparison.
Ricarda Louk assumes that her daughter died on the same Saturday, October 7, possibly due to a gunshot wound to the head during the terrorist attack. In the video of her she was lying motionless in the truck, so her family clung to the hope that she was unconscious.
A few days later, on October 10, Ricarda Louk said that she had learned that her daughter was “in critical condition” with a very serious head injury in a hospital in Gaza. “Every minute is decisive,” pleaded her mother, who in recent weeks has repeatedly addressed the federal government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz imploring help “to quickly remove Shani from the Gaza Strip.”
Shani Louk never lived in Germany, although she went to visit her grandparents in Ravensburg (southern land of Baden-Württemberg). Her mother, Ricarda Louk, a German who was Catholic and converted to Judaism, has lived in Israel for 30 years with her Israeli husband. The family resides 80 kilometers from Gaza.
In the horrific scene in the video, several Hamas gunmen shouted from the open back of the van where a half-naked female body lay face down, while a crowd on foot cheered them on. A man was grabbing her by her hair and another had her leg over the young woman’s waist.
