Yet amid the devastation, came a glimmer of hope as she and her in-laws focussed on her bump, hoping, praying and believing that this baby-to-be would grow up to see peace in its lifetime.
That bump was me and the story was relayed to me last Saturday when, just weeks before my 51st birthday, Hamas launched its barbaric attack.
Virtually every conversation I’ve had in the last week has struck a raw nerve, but this image of my young parents holding on to me in utero and dreaming of peace has been one of the most heartbreaking.
On Friday several Jewish schools in Britain closed their doors due to fears of reprisals here in the UK. Earlier in the week, many urged pupils to remove outward symbols of their identity.
It has been anything but business as usual this week for the Jewish community, as members – ordinary British citizens, among them your friends, neighbours, colleagues – have avoided regular haunts and cancelled plans for fear of putting themselves and their loved ones at risk.
We are not just hurting, we are scared and we are broken.
Not only have we seen bands of terrorists slaughtering our people, but we have seen that the warnings from our grandparents and great-grandparents were ones that we should have heeded.
I have spent my whole adult life railing against these cries, holding on to my dual identity but truly and passionately believing there must be another way and that talk of omnipresent anti-Semitism and history repeating itself were the words of a paranoid and insular community.
I have sent my children out into the world as proud and confident British Jews with strong friendships and connections to people from every walk of life.
I have refused to let the “everybody hates us” narrative be a part of their upbringing and, together with my husband, have always encouraged them to approach life with open hearts and minds.
So how on earth do I now explain, not just to myself but to them, the celebrations and the glorification on Britain’s streets and around the world of the brutal murder of hundreds of Jewish people, not to mention the unbridled hate raging on social media?
