They Thought They Knew Death, but That Didn’t Prepare Them for Oct. 7

At 76, David Weissenstern has collected the remains of the dead for most of his adult life. But after the Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas-led fighters killed about 1,200 people along Israel’s border with Gaza, he can no longer stand the smell of grilled meat. The odor, he says, reminds him too much of burned human flesh.

His son Duby Weissenstern, 48, has lost track of time after working successive days and nights to recover those killed on Oct. 7. He now marks time in relation to that date.

And his son-in-law Israel Ganot, 32, now gags at the smell of food that has turned rotten. He was in the second wave of recovery workers who reached bodies that had been trapped under rubble for weeks.

All three men are part of ZAKA, an Israeli nonprofit founded in 1995 whose name is the Hebrew acronym for Disaster Victim Identification. Its black-and-yellow vests have become synonymous with bus bombings and shootings in Israel, and its members are often first and last on the scene, rushing to collect every drop of blood and bone fragment for burial, sometimes even before the police arrive.

Made up of more than 3,000 volunteers, most of them ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, the group says it is driven by a holy mission to give families closure after the violent death of loved ones.

But there is little closure for the volunteers.

The work, they say, can be psychologically taxing, with many not even beginning to cope with the trauma of Oct. 7. And they are frequently called upon to recount what they saw by Israeli government officials and journalists, which can re-traumatize them, psychologists say.