Amid the terrifying stories coming out of Israel and Gaza, John Rauschenberger has one with a happy ending.
His daughter, Emilee, her husband and their five children were able to flee Gaza to Egypt Thursday, ending an ordeal in which they’d been trapped in the war-torn area since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel.
“We are very blessed,” Elgin resident John Rauschenberger said Friday. “Emilee, the kids and her husband are out. They were not harmed physically. We’re very fortunate.”
Emilee, an Elgin native, and her family left Gaza through an Egyptian border crossing where U.S. consulate staff were waiting to transport them to Cairo. Egyptian officials told the family they needed to leave the country within 72 hours, said Rauschenberger, who was able to speak to them via FaceTime from their hotel across from the consulate office, he said.
They were visiting her husband’s family in Gaza when the fighting began, and ended up taking shelter in a small apartment near the Egyptian border with 31 other people. Just finding food and water became a daily ordeal, Emilee said when interviewed by NBC News.
Rauschenberger’s family, which includes John’s sister Carol Rauschenberger, an Elgin City Council member, adopted a “we’re all in until they’re all out” approach, he said, as they worked to get publicity about the plight of American citizens unable to leave Gaza. They enlisted the help of three U.S. senators and four U.S. representatives, including Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Schaumburg, whose 8th District includes Elgin.
Krishnamoorthi contacted U.S. officials within 24 hours of the Oct. 7 attack and got the family on a list to secure their evacuation, John Rauschenberger said.
Emilee’s contact with her family was sporadic as Israel shut down communications in Gaza and was later pressured to restore it. Connections would last only 60 to 90 seconds, Rauschenberger said.
“The conversations were short. It got to be hard to get information,” he said.
Emilee and her family learned Thursday her name was on a list of 400 Americans to be evacuated but when they walked to the border, they learned her husband was not included as a family member, Rauschenberger said.
Her husband is a British citizen born in Palestine. They were visiting his parents, who own an olive tree farm in Gaza, when the fighting began.
Rauschenberger said somehow his son-in-law was able to convince Egyptian officials to let him into the country with his family.
“He’s quite a salesman,” Rauschenberger said. “We were blessed that they got out in the first wave.”
The family is “happier than a lark” to be out of Gaza, he said. When he talked to his daughter, he could see her stress was gone, he said.
Rauschenberger is hoping to be reunited with his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren soon. The family is returning to England and hoping to get an emergency visa for Emilee’s husband, who is in the process of getting a green card so the family can relocate to the U.S., he said.
The situation in Gaza has become nightmarish, he said.
“The best way I heard her describe it is that it went from bad to worse to horrible to horrific,” Rauschenberger said.
Finding food and water was incredibly hard over the last few days, he said, and the apartment they were staying in became more crowded as the number of people fleeing the bombing in northern Gaza increased.
And there remains the fact that while his family is safe, there are many other Americans still in Gaza wanting to leave, Rauschenberger said.
“Now we really need to focus on how to get the other Americans out and get the Hamas hostages out,” he said. “We really want to keep the focus on that.
“I think Hamas are like the Nazis were in the ‘30s and ‘40s. It is not acceptable. We support the eradication of Hamas, but let’s not kill the rest of the country (along with them).”
Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
