EXCLUSIVE: Holocaust survivor, 89, is a refugee for the second time in his life after Hamas terrorists forced him to evacuate from his leafy Kibbutz just outside Gaza

Holocaust survivor Zvi Solow, 89, expected to live out his retirement in the leafy calm of Kibbutz Nirim barely a mile from Gaza.

On October 7, the terrorists of Hamas had other plans for him and his neighbours when they embarked on the murderous killing spree that sparked Israel's bloody war on Hamas in Gaza.

The kibbutzniks were used to the sporadic rocket attacks from Gaza which sent them running to their bomb shelters.

As Zvi, whose family fled Poland in 1940, put it: 'Hamas has visited from time to time, but this was different.

'We were asleep on a Saturday morning, and heard Arabic. We're in small houses and on the lawn between us and next-door were armed young men, speaking Arabic, going from house to house.'

Zvi's British-Israeli neighbours Nadav Popplewell, 51, and his mother Channah Peri, 89, were both kidnapped and Channah's other son Roi, 54, murdered in the attack.

'They kidnapped our neighbours, but we managed to lock the door, otherwise I would not be speaking to you today,' retired academic Zvi told MailOnline.

'We waited seven hours for the army to come. They were supposed to be here, but they were not, and we were hiding, then we heard shooting.

'After a while it quietened down and we stayed home. Everything was locked to keep them out, but eventually the Israeli army came and they guarded us for a whole day almost, gave us food and then we were evacuated.'

He recalled: 'We were with about 400 other people; so many people were killed, hurt, kidnapped, so of course we were scared.

'I have been through WWII and a few wars since in Israel, but this was something else.'

That was the last time Zvi and his wife Osnat, 81, saw the kibbutz home where he has lived since 1959. Since that day, as he put it: 'I am a refugee again, though in better conditions this time.'

Kibbutz Nirim and many others now lie in a prohibited military area fringing Gaza where civilians are not allowed while the war against Hamas continues.

Since then, he has become a refugee once again, just as he and his family were decades ago. This time he's living on another kibbutz in Israel's far south near Eilat.

'I was in danger again and I remember as a child escaping the Nazis,' he said. 'I was dead scared then, yes; I was only six years old but I did think about that time all over again. '

His father, Michael Solowiejczk and mother Hannah were able to escape the Nazis with their young son by 'buying' their way to freedom with every penny they had.

'When the Nazis occupied Warsaw, my father managed to get out. They let us out, to this day I don't know why.'

'Back then you had to donate all your savings, everything you had to the Nazis, you signed an agreement to give them all the money in your bank account and then they gave you 100 Marks per head and we did that.

Of the pro-Palestinian protesters who insisted on staging their march during Saturday's Cenotaph Service, he branded them 'disrespectful.'

He added: 'To hold it on the same day as the cenotaph ceremony was disrespectful. I don't know who has organised this March but the people behind it don't give a damn about Armistice day in 1914 – their only agenda is anti-Israel and always has been.

'Here they see a chance to pursue it under the excuse of human rights in the middle of a war.

'It's a war which the terrorists purposely provoked. Unfortunately people get hurt in wars which is a reason not to start one.'