Supporting the Invisible Wounds of ZAKA’s Post-October 7 Responders
- IMFoC
- Oct 14
- 4 min read
On October 7th, 2023, as the world watched in stunned horror, a different group of Israelis was moving towards the devastation. They were the civilian volunteers of ZAKA Search & Rescue, an organization dedicated to the sacred mission of Mitzvah Shel Emet—the “true kindness” of ensuring every Jewish victim of disaster, tragedy, or terror receives a proper burial. This mission means they are the final witnesses to the nation's darkest moments, the ones who enter the ruins and the killing fields to meticulously collect, identify, and honour every fragment of human life.
In the days and weeks that followed the brutal Hamas attacks on southern Israel, ZAKA volunteers were the ones going house-to-house in Be’er Sheva and Kfar Aza, and combing the vast expanse of the Nova music festival site. They navigated an unprecedented landscape of brutality and mass casualty, a scene of carnage so overwhelming it defied human comprehension. These were not military personnel or forensic experts; they were ordinary citizens—architects, shopkeepers, students, and parents —transformed by circumstance into the bearers of unimaginable sorrow.
The sheer volume and nature of the destruction they faced was unlike anything ZAKA’s 30 years of experience could have prepared them for. They found hundreds of bodies scattered across southern Israel, bearing signs of mutilation, burns, and execution. As ZAKA spokesperson Moti Bukjin described the scene:
"You get dizzy at some point. Some of the bodies are burned. Some are mutilated. Some of the bodies are decapitated. Every house has a story."
"I Remember Every Picture"
For the volunteers, the work involved a horrifying intimacy with the dead. They entered homes where toys and Shabbat candles still lay on tables, alongside the corpses of entire families. They saw the devastating contrast between the life that had been and the instantaneous, brutal end.
One ZAKA volunteer, Irene Nurith Cohn, who was among the first on the ground, captured the indelible impact of this work with a raw, simple statement: “I remember every picture.”
This is the central trauma. The memory is not a vague impression; it is a catalogue of horrors, a gallery of indelible images of human suffering and desecration. When a ZAKA volunteer closes their eyes, they don't see a statistic of 1,200 dead; they see the faces, the positions, the specific, agonizing details of the hundreds of individuals they carefully prepared for burial. They are the ones who held the burned remains, who wrapped the bodies of children, and who painstakingly ensured that even the smallest piece of a loved one was recovered to complete the dignity of burial.
"Five people in a photo, five corpses on the floor," described Jamal Waraqi, an Arab Israeli ZAKA volunteer who worked in the most ravaged communities. This is the reality they absorbed—the simultaneous presence of profound, everyday human life and its horrific, violent erasure.
The Invisible Injury: Trauma that Lingers
The physical exhaustion and danger—working under the threat of rocket fire, often without sleep for days—was temporary. The psychological wound, however, is a permanent, silent injury.
In the months following October 7th, many ZAKA volunteers began to exhibit severe symptoms of trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Volunteers like Oz Avizov described being in a “very bad mental state,” unable to sleep, and exhibiting “strange symptoms” that took months to recognize as abnormal. He recounted sleeping on the floor and realizing he was in a stupor, disconnected from reality.
For decades, ZAKA focused purely on the mission, the Mitzvah of the deceased. The organization’s chief executive, Dubi Weissenstern, admitted they previously gave little thought to providing therapy or trauma relief. But the scale of the October 7th atrocities changed everything. The events exposed the volunteers to a level of horror no one had ever encountered, making the need for psychological care undeniable. As one trauma specialist working with the group noted: “There are memories that we can never erase.”
The volunteer’s burden is now doubled: they carry the trauma of the victims they served, alongside the profound, personal impact of witnessing such inhumanity. Their service did not end when the bodies were collected; it continues every day in the silent struggle to manage the nightmares, the flashbacks, and the profound moral injury that this work has inflicted.
The Path to Healing: Investing in Resilience
In response to this crisis, ZAKA has had to evolve, creating a dedicated Resilience Department and launching intensive therapy retreats. These are not luxuries; they are a vital necessity to save the souls of the volunteers who saved the dignity of the victims.
These retreats employ various therapeutic techniques aimed at lowering stress levels and building psychological resilience. They are places of camaraderie, where the shared experience—which cannot be fully understood by outsiders—can be processed. Volunteers participate in therapeutic practices, including ice baths and voice therapy, with the clear goal of helping them return to a functional, healthy life. This is the new, equally sacred mission: telling the volunteers, "You take care of the people of Israel, and we will take care of you so you can continue doing this important and holy work.”
The mental health of these dedicated individuals must be prioritized. Their work is the bedrock of dignity and Jewish tradition during tragedy. To ask them to continue without providing the necessary resources for their healing is to ask them to shoulder an unbearable, lifelong weight alone. The investment required is an investment in human compassion, in the understanding that the true costs of October 7th are not just physical, but deeply, psychologically rooted in the hearts and minds of those who cleaned up the ruins.
The funds required for these essential trauma workshops, ongoing psychological counselling, and the new dedicated mental health department are substantial and ongoing. They are the only way to heal the people who performed the Mitzvah Shel Emet for the nation.
To support the essential and life-saving mental health initiatives, we urge you to contribute. The Israel Magen Fund of Canada (IMFoC) is ZAKA Search & Rescue’s official partner in Canada.
Source: Collive.com, "I Remember Every Picture: One Woman's Mission After October 7". October 2, 2025
