When Terror Victims Are Your Friends

When we see or hear news about a terrorist attack, about injuries or deaths inflicted on innocent people under the banner of some political or social cause, we shake our heads in horror, feeling sympathy for the victims, who, more than likely, were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

And then, usually, we move on to the next attention-grabbing headline.

We move on unless we happen to have, by an odd coincidence, a personal connection to the victims. If the victims of a terrorist attack are part of your life, friends of yours, people with whom you’ve shared meals, stories, laughter and tears, friends who have stayed at your house, just as you’ve stayed at theirs, then this terrorist event is much more than a fleeting headline. 

In recent days, major news outlets reported that Karen Diamond had died of her wounds after having been critically burned in the Boulder, Colorado fire-bombing attack on a group supporting the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza. 

Karen was a friend, and I hate using the word ‘was.’ I hate talking about her in past tense. 

Knowing the victims of such an attack breaks your heart … and tears flow. The grief you feel for the victims is mixed with immense anger toward the perpetrator. The man who carried out this vicious act had no idea who his victims were. To him, the demonstrators supporting the release of Hamas-held hostages symbolized the despised enemy, the “Zionists” who, according to him, must be destroyed. 

The attacker had no awareness of those whose lives he upended, and yet he harbored a hatred so deep that he was willing to give up his own life to inflict tragedy and pain on others. My gut reaction was a fleeting desire for revenge. I fantasized inflicting pain on the attacker. Feelings of revenge soon morphed into a deep sadness for my friends’ pain and suffering.

Karen’s husband, Lou, who was also injured in the attack and is recuperating, has been my friend for nearly 70 years. When Lou and I were teens, in the 1950s, he and I were part of a close-knit group of friends in a Jewish neighborhood in Baltimore. Teenage beatnik wannabes, we drank, partied, read poetry and prose out loud, and hung out together every weekend, often sleeping on a friend’s floor or couch. We thought of ourselves as brothers. 

Of such stuff are lifetime friendships made, and that’s what happened with us. 

That teenage connection stretched into our adult lives. We Baltimore Brothers have traveled across time-zones to be at our extended family’s important life events like weddings and bar/bat mitzvahs. As we’ve moved into old age, these gatherings have included being present for illnesses, memorial services and celebrations of life.   

Now in our mid-80s, the Baltimore Brothers — and our wives — have been affected by the woes of aging, but what none of us ever expected was a senseless, unspeakable terrorist attack.  

After the attack, in a private, secure post shared with friends and family, the victims’ sons let us know how their parents were faring in the hospital where they were interned. Karen’s injuries were dauntingly severe, and after several weeks of heroic work by the doctors, the news about her condition shifted from cautiously hopeful to tragic, and a crushing post notified us that Karen’s injuries were simply not survivable. With her usual tough-cookie grace, Karen agreed to no more skin grafts or surgeries, restricting her treatment to comfort measures in order to ease her pain. Death was imminent.

In making this decision, she communicated a feeling of peace. Her main concern was for Lou — she wanted us to remember he would need support without his lifelong partner. That was typical of Karen, who was generous, always thinking of others’ welfare ahead of her own.

Karen and Lou, when they were attacked, were taking part in a peaceful demonstration of support for those who have been held as pawns in a war that’s gone on for nearly two years, and in a way, Karen and Lou also became victims of that war, a war that’s often in the news. 

The attack that destroyed my friends’ lives was also in the news for a few days, and then again a month later when Karen’s death was reported. Since then, this story has disappeared from the news as other events, more earth-shaking, have taken over. 

But not for the victims’ friends and family. For those of us who have cherished Lou and Karen’s friendship, there is nothing more earth-shaking than what happened to my Baltimore brother and his wife.

Roberto Loiederman has written more than 100 articles for The Jewish Journal. He is co-author of “The Eagle Mutiny,” a nonfiction account of the only mutiny on an American ship in modern times.