On the hundredth day after Hamas breached the Gaza border and murdered the largest number of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust, the Young Israel of West Hempstead hosted the volunteers who spent the past 15 weeks identifying the dead, comforting their survivors, and themselves.

“Hamas’ intent was to attack the Jewish people and turn them into numbers,” ZAKA COO Duvi Wessenstern said. “The mission of ZAKA is to turn them back into names of human beings. We have not had one moment to stop. The volunteers of ZAKA are truly heroes of great strength and power. We’re very broken up inside.”

Established in 1995, ZAKA has grown to multiple chapters across Israel, 50 teams worldwide, with more than 3,000 volunteers trained to identify the dead and give them a halachic burial. They are visible in the aftermath of terrorist attacks but have also been vital for non-conflict deaths such as suicides, automobile accidents, and crime scenes. Its expertise in identifying human remains brought them on disaster relief missions abroad in Turkey, Morocco, and Haiti, following earthquakes in those countries.

Simcha Greiniman has been a volunteer for more than 32 years, a father of five, grandfather of three, and owner of a carpenter business.” On Simchas Torah, I was beginning to understand that the world was not the same. We were not ready for this. We headed down to Ashkelon.”

He then got a call to continue driving south to Sderot. “I can’t believe what happened. Anyone hear a siren? Because I was sure it was a missile hit,” he recalled. Cars were burned and bodies out of the cars in different corners on the highway. Did we miss a car accident?”

He was told to continue driving to Sderot as there were missiles flying and terrorists roaming the area. “Twenty bodies were waiting for us; all of this was happening under sirens and missiles. Massive shooting at the police department and more bodies everywhere you look.”

After collecting bodies in Sderot, Greiniman’s team returned to the highway, with a group of soldiers guarding them. “We’ve dealt with burned cars. What you see is not a body, only bones. I put a bag under them, I touched the bone and the entire skeleton disintegrated. They were hit with grenades, liquids, burning up to 600 degrees. Everything is ashes.” ZAKA then brought vacuum cleaners to collect the human ashes for burial. “There were hundreds of cars in this situation. It took close to five hours. Our truck had 72 bodies from floor to the ceiling.”

Their task was far from finished, as they still had to clear the grounds of the Nova music festival and kibbutzim near the Gaza border. “There were 800 volunteers on the scene all of the time. At the rave party, close to 200 bodies were in the field, and 500 on the highways. The main goal was that the army was coming into Gaza. If they see what we saw, they wouldn’t be able to work. Their spirit is number one when heading into war.”

At the Be’eri kibbutz, the group came under fire. “I jumped into a ditch. Bodies on my side. Walking into a war zone. In a place where there is no man, you have to do it,” he said, quoting the mishnah in Avos.

“It was so dangerous, there were terrorists running around, dressed as medics and soldiers. The next morning, we started collecting the bodies. Every house is a story. Men, women, children, Holocaust survivors, people connected to machines. The smell of blood.”

In one house, Greiniman slipped on a puddle of blood and then entered a room where a helpless man was killed in bed attached to a medical machine. “In the next house, we saw a birthday cake on a living room table. Who lived in this house? We came to do chesed shel emes.”

Smelling burned flesh from a back room, he turned on his flashlight to see two children’s skulls, and three adult skulls, their bones in an embrace. “Taking the bodies out of that room, walking by the birthday cake, seeing the pictures.” They looked at the photos on the walls to identify the murdered residents.

The Israeli government tasked ZAKA with cleaning out all traces of human remains and blood at the kibbutzim, the rave festival, and in vehicles on nearby roads. More than 500 cars, bullet-ridden and burned, were searched for the dead. His team took up to 16 hours to remove all traces of human remains from emergency shelters, where people huddled in fear as Hamas terrorists tossed grenades, shot bullets, and set the buildings ablaze. We were collecting the bodies in a way that you can identify them as fast as you can. DNA tests are good but not enough in some situations,” he said.

In its nearly three decades of work, ZAKA has a strict policy not to photograph human remains, out of respect for these individuals. “No one wants someone else in their family shown in such situations. It’s not kavod ha’meis.” In the aftermath of the October 7 attack, they received rabbinic permission to do so, documenting the crime to a skeptical world.

“You work like a robot, on a mission,” he described his coping mechanism. “Then you come in again and start to understand what you’re doing and what really happened in the house. That’s the hardest part.” The sight of corpses embracing in the corner of a burned-out safe room is unspeakably traumatic and all volunteers continue to undergo therapy following their mission. Part of their healing is knowing that their work brings closure to survivors and dignity to the dead.

“Making sure that these people had a burial, that families know. To be calm. To know that he’s alive or that he’s dead. We were there for them. Not only chesed with the meisim but also chesed with the chayim.”

ZAKA’s name stands for Zihuy Korbanot Ason (disaster victim identification). “After October 7, it stands for Zeh Kiruv Achim. That’s our connection to klal Yisrael, one family united,” Greiniman said. He ended the lecture noting that ZAKA is prepared in northern Israel in case hostilities with Hezbollah rise to a state of war. In the meantime, the volunteers are healing, speaking, and receiving support from diaspora communities.

Their work is not cheap. A lighting system costs $10,000, a stretcher is $2,500, and mass casualty kit is $1,750, among other items. Its units include funeral arrangements, hazmat, missing persons, mortuary, and underwater recovery.

“Believing in what you’re doing, no one else can do. That’s the motive. This is where ZAKA members are standing today. To be ready that every volunteer gets the right care,” Greiniman said.

Yossi Landau, head of ZAKA operations in southern Israel, described the past 100 days as an ongoing task. “It is difficult. I am telling the volunteers that I am on a mission. It’s a holy mission. It’s in our religion and it’s a mission that we have to complete. It’s our brothers and sisters.”

By Sergey Kadinsky