Commentary – Even after three years, Natan Kenig is haunted by 7 October

PARIS, 7 October /ATSH-AFP/ – Natan Kenig does not need to close his eyes to relive 7 October 2023.

The rows of burned-out cars, the bodies on the ground or the rockets in the sky.

“I saw atrocities, I saw the most terrible things in this world,” he says.

Three years after the Hamas attacks, this member of the rescue teams, one of the first responders at the scene, remains haunted by what he saw.

Like the whole country, which today commemorates the worst massacres ever committed on its soil.

It is hard to see immediately the invisible wounds behind his sharp features, his rough beard and his direct gaze.

Then he says he “would not wish anyone the experience of seeing bodies burning in cars and trying to rescue them. It is inhuman.”

It takes a lot to shake this 48-year-old man, a volunteer for three decades with ZAKA, an Orthodox Jewish NGO specialised in collecting the remains of victims of violent deaths, including their blood, so that they can be buried whole, as Judaism requires.

Known for their rapid response, its roughly 3,000 members are often the first to arrive at the scene of a massacre or accident and are trained to help survivors before tending to the dead.

So, in the early hours of 7 October, Natan Kenig rushed towards the Gaza border areas, alerted by a colleague that something was happening.

“I turned back onto the road and God and I found ourselves facing a row of burned-out cars, with people’s bodies shot dead on the asphalt,” he recounts.

“Suddenly, you enter another world, a world frozen in time,” he stresses.

– “A deep wound” –

He does not yet know it, but he has just arrived near the site of the “Nova” music festival, one of the epicentres of the attacks by the Palestinian Islamist movement, which would trigger a devastating Israeli response in Gaza.

More than 370 people would be killed there, out of the 1,221 deaths left by the attacks in Israel, according to official figures.

At that moment, Natan Kenig devotes himself wholeheartedly to his mission, helping the survivors, then combing the area to collect the bodies, in particularly horrific conditions.

He focuses on the difficulty of accurately identifying victims burned alive in their cars or homes, in the kibbutz attacked by Hamas.

He tells how he sent a bag containing “several hundred grams” of ash collected from a car, together with a ring and a piece of a burned phone, to the forensic institute, without knowing how many victims had died.

“A month and a half later, four people were identified and there were four funerals,” he explains.

“This is my mission in this world,” he adds afterwards.

He continued this work until February 2024, so great was the scale of the mission.

For him, “the day of 7 October lasted four months.”

But this immersion in horror eventually found a crack in his armour.

“A deep wound,” admits this first responder, who is now seeing a psychologist.

– “Bearing witness” –

The contrast between his face, now heavy and sombre, and his radiant expression in old photos posted on his social media is striking.

Before 7 October, this chef had specialised in smoked meat.

“I brought joy to people through food and I put my heart into every dish,” he says.

“But after seeing so many burned bodies, that no longer works,” he says a little later.

His personal and social life has suffered as well.

“Sometimes, I remember certain situations, things I saw on the ground. It is not easy; you are sitting with people, at a table, eating, and suddenly you have to leave,” he sighs.

Despite everything, this devout man refuses to feel sorry for himself.

“I am alive, thank God. I am alive and I want to live, I will go on living, no matter what those who want to destroy us say,” he says.

He takes out his phone and scrolls through hundreds of photos and videos taken during those terrible days.

“It is important for me to bear witness,” explains this father of four.

“For the next generation. So that they make sure this never happens again,” he adds a little later.