Hamas spent only three hours of Ofer Calderon’s 484-day captivity keeping him above ground, confining the 54-year-old deep underground in their labyrinth of terror tunnels in Gaza where he witnessed systematic torture, and the mastermind behind the October 7, 2023 massacre.

“I recognized him immediately,” Calderon told Channel 12 in his first comprehensive interview since his February release, describing the face-to-face meeting with late Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar deep in Gaza’s tunnel network.

“He was carrying a fax machine that he used to communicate without being intercepted.”

Calderon’s nightmare began when Hamas terrorists stormed Kibbutz Nir Oz, seizing him along with his children Sahar, 16, and Erez, 12.

While his children were released during the November 2023 truce, Calderon remained in captivity for over 15 months, spending just three hours above ground during his entire imprisonment.

For the first three weeks of captivity, Calderon believed his entire family had perished in the October 7 massacre.

“I initially thought my entire family in Nir Oz had died,” he recounted. The breakthrough came when fellow captive Rimon Kirsht revealed she had been held with his daughter Sahar.

“I begged my captor to let me see my daughter and was taken to the apartment where she was being held.”

During his time in a Khan Younis tunnel, Calderon provided Hamas regional commanders with a handwritten list of names in English, seeking information about other potential survivors.

The commander confirmed his son Erez was alive in a hospital above ground.

“We relayed a message to him that Sahar and I are okay,” Calderon said. “He of course asked to have his dad come to him, and was told that’s impossible.”

The physical conditions were deliberately brutal. Calderon described surviving on minimal rations in underground tunnels with “horrible sanitary conditions.”

The psychological warfare was equally calculated. “I would cut [pita] in half, put half in my pocket to snack on later. I ate it grain-by-grain,” he said. “You feel like you’re in Holocaust stories.”

Hamas captors weaponized hope as torture. After watching his children’s release on television, his captors promised his freedom was imminent.

“That’s it, they got out the kids, got out the young women, now is adults — that’s what the Arabs told me. And it didn’t happen,” he revealed.

Often, Calderon found himself in a tunnel directly targeted by IDF strikes. “We were lying there for six weeks, two months, and there were awful explosions,” he said. “Death was always present.”

During the later stages of his captivity, Calderon was moved to another tunnel where he witnessed fellow hostage Yarden Bibas being told his wife Shiri and young sons Ariel and Kfir had been killed.

It was in this location that Sinwar made his appearance, carrying the fax machine he used for secure communications to avoid Israeli intelligence interception.

After Hamas released Calderon in a propaganda-themed ceremony along with fellow hostages Keith Siegal and Yarden Bibas, he looked nothing like his former self, having lost 55 pounds.

In an attempt to make him look healthier, his captors deliberately “fattened” him just beforehand with large amounts of food, including rotten vegetables.

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