At 76, David Weissenstern has collected the stays of the lifeless for many of his grownup life. However after the Oct. 7 assaults, by which Hamas-led fighters killed about 1,200 individuals alongside Israel’s border with Gaza, he can not stand the scent of grilled meat. The odor, he says, reminds him an excessive amount of of burned human flesh.

His son Duby Weissenstern, 48, has misplaced monitor of time after working successive days and nights to get better these killed on Oct. 7. He now marks time in relation to that date.

And his son-in-law Israel Ganot, 32, now gags on the scent of meals that has turned rotten. He was within the second wave of restoration staff who reached our bodies that had been trapped beneath rubble for weeks.

All three males are a part of ZAKA, an Israeli nonprofit based in 1995 whose identify is the Hebrew acronym for Catastrophe Sufferer Identification. Its black-and-yellow vests have turn into synonymous with bus bombings and shootings in Israel, and its members are sometimes first and final on the scene, dashing to gather each drop of blood and bone fragment for burial, generally even earlier than the police arrive.

Made up of greater than 3,000 volunteers, most of them ultra-Orthodox Jewish males, the group says it’s pushed by a holy mission to provide households closure after the violent loss of life of family members.

However there’s little closure for the volunteers.

The work, they are saying, may be psychologically taxing, with many not even starting to deal with the trauma of Oct. 7. And they’re regularly known as upon to recount what they noticed by Israeli authorities officers and journalists, which may re-traumatize them, psychologists say.

Critics have challenged the group’s practices, saying volunteers destroyed proof of battle crimes in the course of the Hamas assault of their haste to get better and bury our bodies. Some activists, in search of to disclaim that militants raped and mutilated victims on Oct. 7, have stated ZAKA volunteers’ testimony is unreliable as a result of the boys are usually not medical consultants or law enforcement officials educated in investigating intercourse crimes.

Some ZAKA members have given deceptive accounts to the information media, and a few impostors posing as volunteers have given false data within the group’s identify.

Within the worst-hit areas of the south, some volunteers are nonetheless working to get better our bodies by sifting by way of mounds of ash, searching for bone fragments in automobiles and houses charred by rocket-propelled grenades. Jewish legislation dictates that our bodies must be buried as full as potential, making each shard of bone treasured to ZAKA.

“They see so many our bodies, and work so instantly with human our bodies which were torn aside, that they’re all psychologically impacted,” stated Rony Berger, a psychology professor at Tel Aviv College, who has studied and labored with ZAKA volunteers for years.

“They’re very adept at dealing with stress, but it surely takes a toll,” Mr. Berger stated. “From confusion to disassociation, it’s onerous to do away with photos in your head as soon as they’re there.”

Usually, Mr. Berger stated, it’s the smells — like burned or rotted flesh — that stick with the volunteers the longest, creating triggers that may later take them again to the scenes of loss of life.

Final month, Yossi Landau, 55, escorted a reporter by way of the shell of a two-story house in Kibbutz Be’eri. Fewer than 5 miles from the border with Gaza, the group was certainly one of the hardest hit on Oct. 7. Bullet fragments had been nonetheless embedded in the lounge wall, subsequent to a leather-based couch and kids’s toys. As he entered the remnants of a bed room, he famous the sticky-sweet scent that hung within the air.

“It’s the scent of loss of life — when you scent it as soon as, you bear in mind it your entire life,” stated Mr. Landau, who’s the pinnacle of ZAKA’s division within the south.

Right here, he stated, an aged couple had been killed in an explosion. He rubbed an invisible spot on the wall the place, weeks earlier, he had fastidiously sponged off blood and tissue.

As Mr. Landau walks by way of the kibbutz, he stops regularly to talk with journalists, giving interviews to tv networks from Japan, Germany and Italy. Like many different ZAKA volunteers, he has turn into an unofficial information to the horrors that unfolded on Oct. 7, although he admits he’s drained and worries about getting the small print proper.

He feels offended when he reads accounts on-line that deny the occasions of Oct 7. Hamas gunmen, he factors out, launched their own footage of the assaults. Israeli forensic authorities have published a list, together with social safety numbers, of these killed.

Nonetheless, Mr. Landau acknowledges that within the practically three months which have handed because the terrorist assault, some tales have been exaggerated and misinformation has spread. At the least one individual has been caught impersonating a ZAKA paramedic and giving interviews to the international information media, Mr. Landau stated.

Requested about stories, attributed to him, that youngsters had been beheaded on Oct. 7, Mr. Landau denied making the declare, although he acknowledged generally misspeaking within the rapid aftermath of the assault. What he noticed himself, he stated, was a small, burned physique with at the least a part of the pinnacle lacking, maybe severed by the drive of a blast. It was unclear, he added, if it was the physique of teenager or somebody youthful.

He factors out that dozens of kids had been killed on Oct. 7.

Mr. Landau is conversant in the criticism that ZAKA didn’t correctly doc the our bodies of ladies for proof of sexual assault. Girls had been discovered with their pants and underwear pulled down, he stated, in addition to with knives of their genitals. However ZAKA, he stated, is educated in amassing human stays, not in forensic pathology or in utilizing rape kits.

“We be certain that we get better the physique, as a lot of the physique as we probably can, for burial. That’s our position,” Mr. Landau stated. “We had been additionally being shot at whereas we had been attempting to achieve our bodies. We had been working as shortly as we might and we didn’t cease to take images.”

In interviews, 4 different ZAKA volunteers additionally stated that that they had come beneath hearth whereas attempting to get better our bodies within the week after Oct. 7. The group rushed to get better the our bodies each as a result of there have been worries that Hamas would ferry the lifeless to Gaza as bargaining chips for prisoner exchanges, and since Jewish legislation dictates that the lifeless must be buried as shortly as potential.

Duby Weissenstern, who reached the world simply hours after Hamas had launched its assault, stated he was informed to show again by safety forces within the space.

“They informed me that Hamas was nonetheless right here, and so they had been nonetheless killing individuals, however I noticed lifeless our bodies on the street, and I knew what I wanted to do,” stated Mr. Weissenstern, the chief govt of ZAKA.

Alongside three different males, he labored as shortly as potential to carry our bodies onto the specialised vehicles ZAKA makes use of. They regularly got here beneath hearth, he stated, from rockets and mortars launched from Gaza.

“At first, we stopped and ducked for canopy each time there was a growth,” he stated. “However then we stopped as a result of it could take too lengthy. We needed to work shortly, earlier than dusk, as a result of the Israeli military was on the point of transfer in.”

As he labored, he texted his father, brother-in-law and different members of the family who work with ZAKA.

Of their household, every member had discovered a singular manner to deal with the trauma. He stated he would communicate with a therapist — as soon as he has had a little bit of time to himself.

His father copes by way of prayer. An ultra-Orthodox Jew who lives in Jerusalem, David Weissenstern prays on the Western Wall as typically as he can, he says, typically sobbing into his prayer scarf as he processes what he noticed.

Menachem Weissenstern, one other son who volunteers at ZAKA, stated he spoke about what he witnessed solely to his spouse, who has turn into an impromptu therapist.

In early December, dozens of members of the Weissenstern household gathered to mark the primary night time of Hanukkah. For Duby Weissenstern, the date was “9 weeks since Oct. 7.”

When they’re away from their households, the Weissenstern brothers share tales of what they noticed with one another. However when family members on the gathering requested how they had been doing, they merely nodded and stayed silent.