Victor Fadlun, chair of Rome’s Jewish community, stands by a Shabbat table laid for the 203 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Photo: Reuters/Matteo Nardone

The chair of the Jewish community in Rome, Victor Fadlun, on Friday presided over what he called the “saddest Shabbat table in the world,” as he attempted to drive home to the Italian public the plight of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas terrorists in the “hellish bunkers” of Gaza.

A long table set with challah, bottles of wine, and 203 empty chairs — one for each of the Israelis seized following the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7 — was laid out along the via Catalana, in the heart of the Italian capital’s Jewish quarter, as the community prepared to mark the Friday onset of Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. A post on Instagram from the community noted that “hundreds of Israelis are waiting for their relatives and friends; our Shabbat dinner table will not be complete until each of them returns home.”

Behind each chair was the name and the photograph of a hostage, many of whom are infants and young children as well as elderly people. Several hostages are also reported to have sustained physical injuries during the onslaught prior to being seized and taken to Gaza.

“Over 200 people who are locked down and imprisoned in Gaza,” Fadlun told the la Repubblica news outlet. “Among them there are children as young as a few months old and the elderly. Our hope is that this table will soon be full and that everyone will return home healthy.”

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Fadlun then spoke of  “an invisible table that’s even bigger” for the “over 1,300 barbarically murdered” during the Hamas onslaught.

Fadlun expressed hope that the military conflict would end soon, “because otherwise it is a threat to the entire democratic world. We fear that something could happen outside Israel too, but we must not be afraid.”

“Solidarity and support towards Israel are essential,” he said, adding that the “Palestinians themselves today are hostage to this violence and crimes of terrorists.”