Testimonies Without Boundaries E-Book

Alon Penzel

• Herausgeber: Spines
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

On the morning of October 7th, 2023, the terrorist organization Hamas launched a surprise attack against the State of Israel. This book contains exclusive, shocking and unimaginable testimonies of the horrors that were part of the brutal massacre, during which babies, toddlers, children, pregnant women and elderly were raped, tortured, burned, cut, slashed, strangled, shot and stabbed. In conversations, testimonies and rare documentations from the field, volunteers of the ZAKA organization, the head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine and survivors of the Nova festival reveal for the first time the greatest national disaster in the history of the State of Israel in all its various aspects, while providing a historical commemoration for the great loss, and on the other hand – to the heroism of the people of Israel.

Alon Penzel (23) is an Israeli spokesperson, author, journalist, social activist and TV anchor. He served in the military as the spokesperson for the foreign press, in the Unit for Coordination of Government Activities in the territories (COGAT), and nowadays, he represents the State of Israel in the international arena at global-worldwide conferences, events, and lectures. In his youth, Alon participated in "Model UN" and even won the prestigious "Ramon Award" for excellence and leadership after publishing his first book at the age of sixteen. As a specialist in international relations and diplomacy, Alon completed a negotiation course on behalf of Harvard University in the United States and is currently studying political science at the University of Haifa.

Warning! This book contains graphic and difficult-to-read descriptions of the horrific atrocities that were committed, and its content is not suitable for children under the age of fourteen.

Leseprobe

Alon Penzel

Testimonies Without Boundaries

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2024 by Alon Penzel

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Published by Spines

ISBN: 979-8-89383-416-1

Testimonies Without Boundaries

Israel: October 7th 2023

Alon Penzel

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Testimonies from ZAKA Volunteers

Chapter 2

Evidence from the "Forensic Medicine Institute”

Chapter 3

Testimonies from Nova Survivors

Chapter 4

It's Enough To Be Human

Chapter 5

The Statement of Israel's State President, Mr. Isaac Herzog

"Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thine arm. For love is strong as death."

The Song of Songs

The body of testimonies in front of you documents a terrible truth, first-hand from eyewitnesses, individual stories from people's mouths, without summarizing events, without headlines and generalizations or sensationalism. We must not cover up the naked truth that was revealed before our eyes on the morning of the Black Sabbath. We must document and preserve it for generations.

Our people have fulfilled this duty throughout the generations in stories of destruction, poems, and during the Memorial Day observances of the "Shom⁠1" communities. In the composition "Yeven Mezulah" (The Abyss of Despair) about the riots of 1648-1650, in Bialik's mission to document the Kishinev riots and in the dedication of Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman to documenting in "The Black Book" the horrors of the Holocaust despite the silence and persecution of the Soviet regime.

The obligation of documentation and remembrance is, first and foremost, for our brothers and sisters to ensure that their last cry will be fully heard. Only through it can we look straight ahead and listen to the truth behind it, to its claim and fully understand the hope and prayer that it is.

An abbreviation - A common nickname for the Jewish communities in the cities of Shapira, Vermeiza and Magentza on the banks of the Rhine River. The decrees of the New Testament severely harmed these communities as a result of the Crusades.

Never back down.

The Black Sabbath was a reminder of a most difficult truth, a truth that the whole world discovered at the end of World War II and the Holocaust we went through. A truth that resulted in the oath "never again" that was fulfilled three years later with the establishment of the State of Israel and in the victory of the 1948 Independence War. The Black Sabbath was another dimension in the Jewish timeline, which illustrated to us what happens when the Jews don't have a state and what happens when the Jews don't have weapons.

But unlike the past, the oath "never again" was not a future promise. This oath took place at the same time as the Holocaust that happened to the residents of the South. On the morning of that Saturday, I saw this double revelation before my eyes when I was fighting along with my friends in the kibbutzim that surrounded Gaza. We were citizens who marched south before an order and decree, messengers of a country that did not exist. On the one hand, before our eyes, Auschwitz was resurrected, and on the other hand, before our eyes, the ghetto rebels, the partisans, the underground fighters, and the heroes of 1947-1948 also rose.

Thousands of years of destiny suddenly flowed through our veins, a Jewish destiny with an Israeli response. The ability to decide, lead, and commend even when all the forces of the universe are working against you and not to back down.

To remain human even in the face of Satan.

Do not reject a plea.

We vowed not to reject the plea because of the terror, helplessness, and evil, alongside the heroism and devotion we saw with our own eyes. Long before the first days of the war, 'ISRAEL-is' was founded to tell the personal stories of Israelis, through ordinary people, through everyday life, to bring the story of a country. October 7TH only proved this need even more. From there, we embarked on a long and arduous journey to tell the story of a nation through ordinary people, through everyday life, through those hours and through heroes, believing in the role of Israelis not only to survive and prosper but also to send a message. The belief that the global attention to what is happening in our small country is disproportionate compared to the rest of the world made us find an opportunity to proclaim the gospel that grows out of the worst of all, the gospel of the human spirit of heroism and devotion whose starting point is love and hope.

The 'ISRAEL-is' association aims to harness the potential of tens of thousands of young Israelis to tell the Israeli story in the world. Among our many actions, we joined our fellow, the author of this book, to create the document before you, a collection of testimonies without boundaries. This book demands each of us to look courageously in the face of evil, not only to commit to "never again" yet again but also not to reject a plea to bring forth the gospel of creation, growth, and hope that our existence here symbolizes.

"Violence shall no more be heard in your land, desolation nor destruction within your borders; but you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise."

(Isaiah 60:18)

Nimrod Palmach

CEO of ISRAEL-is

1An abbreviation - A common nickname for the Jewish communities in the cities of Shapira, Vermeiza and Magentza on the banks of the Rhine River. These communities were severely harmed by the decrees of the New Testament as a result of the Crusades.

In Memory of the Victims of October 7th Terrorist Attack.

As these words are being written - children, women, elderly, and young men are still being held captive in the Gaza Strip.

This book is calling for their immediate release.

ChapterOne

Testimonies from ZAKA Volunteers

Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, argued that “pain is the greatest instrument of memory.” In other words, according to him, pain deeply engraves a person's memory.

According to Nietzsche, throughout human history, the perception has been established that we only remember what does not stop hurting, making the principle of “equivalent reward” necessary.

According to this principle, to guarantee the seriousness and sanctity of any promise and ensure that a debt will be repaid, the lender actually “adds” conditions to the contract and reminds the borrower that he is entitled to harm his body, his property, his family, his choices, his life and sometimes even his soul if the borrower does not keep his promise.

In the past, it was even normal to act according to a law that estimated and determined the value of body parts and organs that could be harmed according to unpaid debt.

Nietzsche believed that causing suffering, torture, blood, and sacrifices would serve as an equivalent repayment or compensation for the debt or promise that did not exist (“the pleasure in the act of violence causing suffering - a true festival”).

The question arises: for what possible reason could the children of Kibbutz Be’eri be considered indebted to Hamas terrorists that they would be so brutally killed and treated as though their lives were of no value? What promise did the elderly people of Kfar Aza give to Hamas's terrorists for which they were burned alive? What debt did Hamas's terrorists try to collect from those pregnant women they never met or from those women they brutally raped?

Indeed, in this part, it is impossible to compare the events of October 7th with Nietzsche’s philosophy since it is not about “equivalent reward” because there was never a debt. However, in the second part of his philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw what was going to happen almost forty-five thousand days from the day he died. He foresaw the pleasure, the enjoyment, the satisfaction, the pride, the happiness, and the smiles, or as he called them, “a true festival” that Hamas's terrorists would experience from acts of violence and causing suffering, torture, blood, sacrifices, abuse, rape and murder, due to the slaughter they would commit.

ZAKA volunteers (in the order they are mentioned in the book):

Simcha Greinman – ZAKA volunteer for thirty-two years and the organization’s international communications speaker.

Natan Kenig – ZAKA volunteer for twenty-eight years.

Moti Bukchin – The organization’s speaker.

Ephraim Greidinger – ZAKA volunteer for thirty years.

Yossi Landau – ZAKA volunteer for many years.

Reuven Reuven – Responsible for vehicles and logistics in ZAKA for twenty years.

Shlomo Gotliv – Commander of ZAKA Modi’in Illit and a volunteer in the organization for over twenty years.

Jamal Warraqy – Israeli-Muslim, a ZAKA volunteer for thirteen years.

The photographs in this book were taken in the days following the terrorist attack. They are not necessarily directly related to the events described.

Photography: Zohar Shpak, ZAKA Organization.

“A three-year-old child in a kindergarten - a knife was lodged in his head, inside the skull. There was a hammer on the floor next to him - on the hammer itself were pieces of his skull.”

“After five days in which I slept a total of five hours, I returned home to rest,” Simcha Greinman, a ZAKA volunteer for thirty-two years and the organization’s international communications speaker, told me.

Simcha worked non-stop since the Black Sabbath of October 7th and returned home to honor the Sabbath afterward, but on Friday morning, he was called back to Kibbutz Be’eri with his team.

“We arrived at the kibbutz around 11:00, but they did not let us in as soon as we arrived. There was no voice and no answer. The shooting was crazy, non-stop.” Simcha did not give up and turned to an IDF officer who was there. “Listen to me well,” he scolded him to get his attention during the inferno. Simcha told him insistently that there was no chance that he would desecrate the Sabbath for no reason and demanded that he be given work. The officer was convinced and directed him to check burned buildings that Israeli forces had not yet entered. One of them was a nursery and a kindergarten that belonged to Kibbutz Be’eri.

“I entered the building and saw a small mound at the end of the corridor. I called my team to come and lift the concrete in the area. I had a strange feeling. We found a child, probably five or six years old, when we lifted the concrete. It was possible to know this only by the structure of his jaw because he was all burned, from bottom to top. Everything. Burned. Completely.”

Simcha told me with great difficulty that not only was the child burned, but the ceiling above him collapsed, and he was left among the ruins. But to Simcha's and the team’s great sorrow, this was far from the end of the story.

“We continued to the second room in that kindergarten, where we found a very small three or four-year-old child. We witnessed a very, very shocking scene. He had a knife stuck in his head, inside the skull. On the floor was a hammer whose handle was completely burned, and on the hammer itself were pieces of the toddler’s skull. We put both children into bags.”

In my great innocence, I turned to Simcha and tried to find out if there were adults who stayed in the building. Simcha told me that he and the team searched for the responsible adult who was there, who probably watched over those children before and during the inferno, but they did not find him.

“When we continued to search the house, what we did find was a terrorist’s vest with the Kalashnikov lying next to it. We ran out of the building quickly and informed the IDF that the building had not been cleared at all. In retrospect, it turned out that there were five terrorists in the building.”

Simcha told me that this event had an impact on him, so he insisted on finding out who else was in the building and sent his team to check that specific building time and time again. Just before Simcha told me what the team discovered, and while I was looking at his grim face, I thought to myself, it can’t get any worse than this. Two children were murdered and burned. Pieces of a baby’s, toddler's skull were left scorched on the heart of the hammer.

Per my request at the beginning of the interview, Simcha did not spare any details.

“We found two more people and scattered bones. I brought a special unit of pathologists into the building to examine and scan it. When I returned to Be’eri the next time, there was no longer a building, no rooms, and no children. But yes, besides the children, we found two more people and scattered bones.”

I took a deep breath - another testimony out of dozens that I was exposed to in recent months.

Another testimony that undermined my faith in humanity.

Once again, in my innocence, I turned to Simcha with a question and hoped to hear the correct answer. Unfortunately, I was disappointed again.

“Simcha, I’m sorry for asking, but the knife in the child’s skull, I assume he, was also burned. Is it known if the terrorists stuck the knife and the hammer in him while he was alive or only afterward?” I asked in a dull voice.

“Probably it was when he was alive. I don’t think they stuck a knife in his skull when he was no longer alive. From what I saw, everything was done together while abusing and dealing with the children. Yes, they were alive when they were abused, both of them,” he answered.

“They put a live grenade in her hand so she wouldn’t move and raped her. We found her bent forward, naked and shot. In another building, there were thirty bodies, most of them naked women. There is no doubt that there was a massive rape there.”

Simcha continued to talk about the inferno that took place in Kibbutz Be’eri, and the horrors he experienced at the blood-filled kibbutz were far from over.

“From the kindergarten where we found the two children, one burned and the other burned with pieces of the skull outside, we continued to buildings number 46 and 47. They warned us in advance that on the left side of the buildings, there was still a terrorist hiding with a vest and grenades on him and that in the center of the building, there was a very, very sharp smell.”

The warnings did not prevent Simcha and his team from continuing. They entered the building, immediately saw a piece of tin, and moved it. A mattress was revealed before their eyes.

“We cut the mattress and managed to pull half of it out of the way, and then we saw a woman bent forward, naked. We dug around her to extract her body. While we were taking out her body, we found another body underneath. It was also naked.”

Since there were two civilian bodies, not a terrorist body, I had no choice but to ask Simcha.

“I’m sorry for asking. Were they a couple that was killed while having sex, or are we talking about rape?”

Simcha paused for a few seconds, took deep breaths, and answered, “This is not for us to check. We are not pathologists, but yes, these are civilian bodies.”

After he answered, I wondered if it could be a couple that just wanted to fulfill their love. But how could it be when the couple knew that outside, there was an inferno that had never been seen before? Did they feel death, and instead of hiding, did they decide to be together in the last moments? Did they not know or were not exposed to what was happening? Were the terrorists who invaded the kibbutz the ones who forced them to have sex and then murdered the couple?

I immediately understood that this could be one of many events for which we will probably never get complete, straightforward answers to.

Simcha continued his testimony and shook me even more, “In this building, they found thirty more bodies, most of them women, and all of them were naked.”

It was inevitable for me to interrupt and ask, “That is, there is no choice but to conclude that there was rape there, maybe even group rape.”

This time, Simcha had no doubt, “Definitely. Definitely, when you see these things, there is no doubt about them. There was rape there.”

In another house in Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the main slaughter centers of the disaster that befell the State of Israel, Simcha said that he was exposed to more horrors.

“We found a woman who was bent forward on the bed. Her lower body was naked, and as we were approaching to turn her over to extract the body, we found a grenade in her hand, without the pin. They shot her in the head. Here there were no doubts whether she was raped or not raped. In the pose, she was lying, and with an active grenade in her hand, there is no doubt.”

Although I am already twenty-three years old and define myself as someone who has been through a lot in his life, I immediately stopped Simcha.

“So why did they put a grenade in her hand if they shot her eventually?”

Even now, in retrospect, I do not know why I asked this. Am I so naive, or perhaps I am trying to deny the incomprehensible reality that was right before my eyes?

Simcha answered simply and with chilling composure, “So she wouldn’t move. While they were raping her, they trapped her in such a way that if she moved, it would explode. They knew she wouldn’t want to die, so they put her in that situation.”

He emphasized that fortunately for him and the team, the grenade did not explode.

“In one second, it could have exploded on us. Her hand could have opened in a second, and the grenade could have slipped. We laid her back and ran out.”

“There were twenty-three Thai citizens whose remains were found in a huge pool of blood. They slit their throats, shot their legs. In fact, we walked into a pool of blood. The terrorists slaughtered them all. They drained their blood, like slaughtering a chicken with knives and hammers.”

Not only Israeli citizens were slaughtered in Hamas's terrorist attack. The terroristsdid not distinguish between types of blood.

They slaughtered civilians from Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, from the United States and Canada, from Russia, Australia, and Cambodia. Of course, they also did not pass over Europeans; the victims also came from Britain, France, Germany, and many other countries. In fact, every continent on the globe (except uninhabited Antarctica) suffered casualties in the attack, whether murdered, kidnapped, injured, or missing.

“I arrived at the dining room, in the kitchenette of the foreign Thai workers,” Simcha told me. “There was a kind of step at the entrance to the room. The moment I passed the step, I fell into a puddle.” Since the place was utterly dark, Simcha and the team lit flashlights. They will never forget what was found there. “We found a puddle of blood… a puddle? That was not a puddle. The whole room was flooded with blood! Just in this dining room, there were seven Thais who were slaughtered, blood drained from their bodies.”

“Wait, what does that mean, ‘blood drained from their bodies’?” I asked gently and feared the answer.

“They shot them in the legs and then slaughtered them like slaughtering a chicken. They took off their heads just like that. The head was not completely decapitated, but they slit their throats, and the people simply bled to death. With knives and axes, whatever they had, whatever was at their disposal.”

Simcha told how he coped with the hard scene he found.

“Luckily, I found a pile of rice bags in the kitchenette. I took a box cutter, cut open the rice bags, and used the rice to absorb the blood. So much blood. It was completely insane - crazy amounts of blood. I’m telling you, we couldn’t step on the floor. It was one giant pool of blood! We had to pour between twelve and thirteen bags of rice so we wouldn’t slip in this blood. You can only conclude from this - the abuse that was there was terrible.”

The last sentence forced me to turn to Simcha and clarify, “Is there any indication whether they abused them before they murdered them or afterward?”

Simcha did not hesitate and replied, “It was during the killing. They shot them in the legs before they murdered them. We know this because, according to the shooting, there was an entrance and exit of the bullet from the leg, so they could not escape. Then they approached them and slit their throats to finish the job. They were murdered in such a disgusting way. It was horrifying.”

Natan Kenig, a ZAKA volunteer for twenty-eight years, asked not to forget the foreign victims of the attack.

“True, the terrorists came upon the Jewish people living in Zion, but they did not care who they were murdering or discriminating. They killed Egyptians, Japanese, Italians, Russians, Thais. The list is much longer, and I apologize to the nations whose names I did not mention.”

“Five family members huddled in a circle. The children grabbed their parents by the legs, the heads of the parents and the grandmother leaned on each other. It's a wonderful family picture. Only everyone was burned.”

Simcha mainly talked about his work a week after the attack. But he was there from the first moment.

“I entered Kibbutz Be’eri with my team. It was already the evening of Sunday, October 8th. We entered one of the houses at night. We managed to extract two bodies, but there was a frenzy of shooting inside the kibbutz, and they quickly kicked us out of there.”

But Simcha and his team did not intend to leave so quickly and waited nearby until dawn.

“All night, there was a tough battle in Be’eri. We stood there like chickens. The shooting left us in terrible fear. I was not prepared for something like that.”

Finally, the IDF and armed forces gave Simcha and his team permission to enter the houses in Be’eri.

“We entered one house; I opened the door, and a birthday cake was standing on the table before me.” Simcha shared with me that the moment he noticed the cake. He had already thought about the scenario differently. He began to wonder if it was indeed a birthday cake. And if so, then whose? Did the celebrants survive? Or is it perhaps a 'Simhat Torah⁠1' cake?

He admitted that his thoughts were distracted for a few seconds, and he tried searching for pictures of the family members on the fridge to understand what the story was and what it was about. “It caught my attention; there was no escape. But I didn’t come to eat cake; I came to take care of the bodies,” he said. “Immediately, the sharp, burnt smell of the shelter caught our attention. We entered the room and saw five family members. Two children, a pair of parents and a grandmother. All five were hugging each other in a circle. The children held their parents by the legs, and the heads of the parents and the grandmother leaned on each other.”

“Were they all burned?” I stopped him mid-sentence as if I were someone who was just looking for answers.

“They were all burned, yes. Completely burned, everything, everyone,” he replied and repeated himself with great grief.

In the intensity of the conversation, I cut him off again. “Were they burned while they were alive?”

With his typical composure, he replied, “Yes. Apparently, they were burned alive since the whole room around them was completely burned and charred, and they were burned from the inside out. Their backs were burned more than their fronts. They just tried to escape the fire by holding and protecting each other, so yes, they were burned while they were alive.”

Simcha told me he called that event “circle of life” because they seemed to be hugging and holding each other in a circle.

“The difficulty there was the strongest because, in those moments, we are in a crazy situation. We were the ones who needed to break this circle. We were actually forced to pull out the small hands of the children who held their parents’ legs in fear and to separate the heads of the adults who protected each other. We felt like we were the ones who were breaking the family circle,” he shared. “We, as ZAKA volunteers, had to break this circle and put them into bags.”

The mental difficulty did not end there for Simcha and his team.

“As we placed each family member into a bag, we had to carry them outside the house and, on the way, passed in front of the birthday cake with each and every one of them. We were holding in our hands a bag that once contained a human being and experienced once more the scenario in which you try to belong between the cake to the very body bag that you're holding.”

When I tried to find out how old the children were, he said, “Young. I can’t say what their exact ages were because they were burned and their limbs shrank, but they were two small children.”

“And to whom did the cake belong to?” I asked in an attempt to find an ending to the story.

Like most of the answers we have from the events of October 7th, the response remained vague.

“As a ZAKA volunteer, there are things I do, and there are things I don’t do. The moment you get attached to a family and enter their story, and you connect to it - the difficulty to get out of it is much greater, and you keep it with you for many years.”

Yet, in the current case, Simcha did not resist the temptation.

“I admit, I tried to find a little more information. But to a certain extent, I stopped myself before finding out the family’s story. So no, I don’t know to whom the cake belonged.”

To highlight the dangers of becoming emotionally attached to a family you've worked with, Simcha shared the story of his friend Moti Bukchin, the spokesman for ZAKA.

“He collapsed, he just collapsed. This is after he dealt with the Kotz family, followed their story very closely, and took it very personally. The more he dealt with it, the harder it became for him.” Simcha summed up, “So I know what my limits are. I know what I can’t stand. What will cause me nightmares and unbearable pain? There I stop. But who knows? Maybe in a few months, it will change.”

“In Kfar Aza, a tiny baby lay, more precisely, what was left of him. It is unclear whether they first cut off his hands and then beheaded him with an ax or beheaded him and then abused his body – we don’t know what was done first.”

I encountered the greatest cruelty as we arrived at the kibbutzim on the second and third days. For example, in Kfar Aza, Ephraim Greidinger, a ZAKA volunteer for thirty years, told me, “Their method was coming to the houses and demanding that the residents who were in the safe rooms get out. If the residents do not comply, they simply set the houses on fire.”

During the dozens of testimonies I was flooded with in recent months, I tried not only to listen and absorb what happened but also to understand how things worked and find logic in the madness.

I turned to the volunteers and asked in horrifying naivety, “I don’t understand. Explain how it happens. When you mention burned bodies that are fused together, what does that entail? Do you understand what happened to them at that moment? How are bodies burned together? How is a person’s body completely burned so that nothing is left of it? If there are severed legs, can you see if it’s from an ax or a knife? How does it work?”

Natan answered that question. “Alon, if you try to find some logic, you won’t find it. They didn’t try just to kill. They wanted to destroy, and in some cases, they also managed to destroy any possibility of humanity thriving, the possibility that a father, brother, child, or son would come to cry at the grave of his beloved. They also destroyed that.”

I was unsatisfied with the answer and continued to insist, “But how did they destroy? How can a person’s body be erased?” After all, as I described in this testimony, Ephraim told me about the houses that were set on fire in Kfar Aza.

Natan was very clear and answered in a way that could not be misinterpreted.

“They were equipped with combustible materials, and they did everything so that no memories of their victims would remain. They layered combustible materials on top of combustible materials, not just to kill but to ensure that not a trace of that person would remain. Just imagine what happens to a person’s body in this situation. Some bodies have been reduced to tiny pieces. There are also scenes where nothing is left. Not one thing. In the past, in the most bizarre cases, we managed to find teeth, bones, and things you can extract DNA from. However, this time, there are cases where no trace of DNA exists.”

I did not have time to reply to that complex testimony when Natan raised his voice with an undeniable rage and said, "They've tried to eliminate, destroy, kill all human remains and traces."

We returned to what happened in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, and although I could see on his face that he did not want to continue talking about it, I had to find out.

"And what happened to those who did agree to leave the safe rooms?" I asked Ephraim.