The war in Ukraine – three-four ambulances a day
Valerie and Nahmam work in the beauty and wig industry in Kiev, but when the war in the Ukraine broke out two years ago Nahman began dedicating his time to the rescue of wounded and ill Jews – many Holocaust survivors among them- from the conflict areas. As the ambulances in Ukraine have been commandeered for the war effort, he single-handedly obtained ambulances and chartered medical evacuation flights to evacuate Jews to hospitals in Europe and Israel.
Through a fundraising effort of his own, aided by the ZAKA organization, he opened an improvised field hospital in a 24-room hotel in Moldova. He recruited the medical staff and obtained equipment and medicine. He had also established with ZAKA Israel a hotline in Ukraine and Russian for Jews in need of evacuation to contact.
“Every day, three-four ambulances would arrive at the makeshift hospital with patients in a coma on ventilators”, he says. “I would publish donation requests – and money would pour in from good Jewish people and organizations. The overall cost of this operation was around two million dollars”.
Each evacuation mission was a story onto itself. Nahman recounts: “One came in with his legs amputated, another with untreated wounds. I will never forget the 76-year-old man who arrived, his skin blue with very low levels of blood oxygen. Elderly people were abandoned by their caregivers, who escaped. We treated the sick and wounded and organized evac flights to Israel and Europe. This went on for about eight-nine months. For that entire year I wasn’t able to observe the holidays, or the sabbath, not even the Passover Seder. I just worked around the clock”’ he says.
“I never would have thought I would find myself in such an event”
The Dikstein family arrived for a visit in Israel in the holiday of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles). It was supposed to be a short visit. But on noon of Saturday of October 7, he found himself in the heart of the maelstrom and it was becoming clear that this is a far bigger and grimmer event than the war in Ukraine.
“Saturday noon I contacted ZAKA commander in Israel, and asked what I could do to help. He replied: ‘Get to Barzilai Medical Center. They have loads of bodies; go help with the identification’. We got to Barzilai at about six in the evening and already there were dozens of bodies there. I helped with taking finger prints from dead soldiers. During the drive to the hospital I heard the news citing 200 casualties, and at Barzilai I counted at least 200-250 bodies, so I thought that was the scope of the event. But then I was told about a party and about more bodies”.
On Saturday evening he is able to procure an ambulance and together with Valarie and another three volunteers, he drives to the site of the Nova party. “There I started to grasp the magnitude of the calamity, and realized that what I saw at the hospital was nothing compared to this. Dozens of bodies scattered about, charred vehicles, cars with shot bodies inside. It’s indescribable. When we drove by the protective concrete structures, we could see dozens of bodies inside and charred walls. There was a fear of death in the air and concerns over unpinned grenade traps”.
“We continued to the site of the Nova party. Smoke was still bellowing at the site; the trees were red with flames. There were piles of bodies and we worked all night. We loaded a trailer with bodies – some still so hot from the fire that we couldn’t wrap them in body bags because the bags would melt. We would have to wear three sets of gloves at all times. I was still dressed in my good clothes – white shirt, tailored pants, good shoes. I did not fathom that I would find myself in this kind of scene. You pick up charred bodies, and you don’t know which limb belongs to which body. When I thought that I’ve seen all there is to see in the scene, I then crossed the road and was horror-struck; there were another 200 bodies or so there. This is how we worked nonstop almost until dawn”.
And while the volunteers worked, missiles flew overhead, not always accompanied by sirens, and there were still pockets of fighting between the security forces and terrorists who were still in the area. “The area was still crawling with terrorists until Monday. We would be working and suddenly we would get an alert, throw ourselves down on the ground, and the bullets would whistle overhead. In the morning we started clearing out the security structures, each had at least 20 bloody bodies, and scattered around were yet more bodies of people who tried to escape and were shot in the process, some young – mere teenagers; It was horrible”.
At dawn he drives back to the city of Ashkelon to get some sleep. In his car. “I slept an hour and a half and then returned to the field to help collect bodies from the orchards [of people who tried to hide from the terrorists]. By Monday, we were sure we’ve seen the worst of the event but in the morning, we entered Kibbutz Be’eri. What I saw there I will not forget till my last breath. We went from house to house, discovering bodies and body-parts of children, women, elderly, girls partially stripped from their waist down, people with axes and knives embedded in their bodies. There are no words to described what we found there”.
“There is no comparison to the Ukraine war”
Nahman Dikstein and Valarie his wife worked the massacre sites for two whole weeks befor returning to Ukraine. Valarie, originally from Ukraine, grew up in Avshalom community that is located near the Gaza and Egyptian borders. Many of her friends are from the Gaza envelope communities and although many have returned to their homes, they are finding it extremely challenging to readapt and continue with their lives there.
“I had hardly slept or ate in that entire period. How can you eat a roasted chicken, for example, when the smell reminds you of death? A nightmare. Until now I smoke a huge number of cigarettes a day. To cover up the smell of death stuck in my nose. I’ve decided to come back to Israel, and went back to the field. I stayed at each kibbutz for a day or two. I made it a point to go back to the houses we cleared so I could see them without the bodies and weapons strewn inside. Only after doing that I was finally able to sleep whole night straight instead of only four hours, at best”.
How did this differ from what you experienced in the Ukraine war?
“No comparison whatsoever. I’ve always been dealing with life, not death. Even when evacuating deceased Jews from Ukraine, it was part of the overall job of maintaining human dignity in death as well. In Israel it was just death, death and more death”.
Were you able to document what you’ve seen?
“I asked my wife to document, and I gave the pictures to the relevant bodies. I do not share them with anyone else out of respect for the dead. They belong to the State of Israel, and perhaps Israel can make sure justice is served. But we didn’t document everything. We just came to help put bodies in body-bags and give the victims the dignity they deserved”.
The visit to the UN: “The gave us a hard time in Geneva. We were met with indifference”
In August, Nahman flew to Geneva with Valarie and other Israeli representatives, to talk before the UN Human Rights Council about what they have witnessed. “The attitude we encountered in Geneva reawakened my pain and I told them that ‘We are victims of two assaults. One on October 7 and the other – here, faced with the fact that you refuse to acknowledge that what happened to us was a heinous attack that words fail to describe – atrocious rape of women and the murder of innocent children. We sat there in front of senior human rights officials, who gave us a hard time and were met with indifference”.
“I said to them ‘When you find a body of a women, stripped naked in her own home – what would you think happened? I don’t know how they can even doubt that there was a massacre, as Hamas itself posted in real time photographed and video evidence of what they were doing. But they kept on pushing back with ‘don’t you know what’s going on in Gaza?’ We don’t need their sympathy, only for them to acknowledge the truth – that this was the mass rape, murder and kidnapping of innocents. They had already given us what sympathy they had toward us after the Holocaust”.
Do you think you were able to reach any of them?
“I am not sure. The state of Israel’s public diplomacy is very bad. There’s little chance of influencing any of them. Nonetheless, we must not stop explaining, talking, doing. My wife and I speak many languages. I am willing to report what I have seen in French, German and other languages. Little by little and then some – eventually we’ll get there”.
How do you explain the lapse in Israel’s public diplomacy?
“I think that we don’t want to be seen crying, but when there are images of thousands of Arabs crying in Gaza, while we are announcing ‘until the victory’ – this creates a problem. At the UN they asked how is it that so many Gazans are dying. I replied that we uphold the sanctitude of life and not death and that’s the difference’.” As a ZAKA volunteer I collected the bodies of terrorists as well. I packed them in body bags even though they killed my people. But we are human beings, not animals”.
What needs to change in Israel’s public diplomacy
“The public diplomacy must be more aggressive, stripped from the kid gloves, done by people who know languages: how can this be that someone with a heavy Israeli accent does the public diplomacy in French? If youre targeting Great Britain – bring in someone with a British accent. There is no shortage of such people. If you’re speaking to Americans, use someone who knows the American language and culture”.
There is NO Amount of Money That Can Compensate for What I Had to See”
The Gaza War had reignited the controversy in Israel of on the debate of equal duties, with a slight uptick in the ultra-orthodox community’s willingness to enlist, alongside the call to designate the ZAKA activity and other activities as National Service in which they can serve. Until then, ZAKA’s activity are almost exclusively on a voluntary basis.
Do you not think that ZAKA volunteers should be paid for their work?
“When I report to Zaka duties, I do so with a single motivation – to help. There might be volunteers that are financially destitute that could benefit from pay. But I refuse to receive a salary. I have a friend in ZAKA who for three-four weeks traveled daily from the north of Israel to the Gaza envelope communities to help clean away all the blood. Can you place a price-tag on something like that? Picking up bodies of children with hammers embedded in their skulls; of women that have been put through the most heinous of hells imaginable before they were murdered and their bodies mutilated even after death – there is no amount of money in the world that could provide sufficient compensation for what my eyes have seen”.
Have you felt any change in the way people treat you as an ultra-orthodox since October 7?
“I always wear a ZAKA pin. In my last visit to Israel, after doing some public diplomacy in French, I was absolutely exhausted and went to buy myself something to eat. I happened to still be with my ZAKA vest on and I was immediately given a discount, and they gave me a lot of respect. But at the same time, I saw a non-religious person yelling at some Chabad religious guys, who were lighting Hannukah candles ‘you’re here celebrating Hannukah while were getting slaughtered in Gaza’. This despite the fact that most of the Chabad men serve in the army”.
Do you think that Israeli society will be more united now?
“My son did National Service in Magen David Adom (Israeli national emergency organization). When I come to Israel and there’s a funeral – I go to it. Even if I don’t know the deceased and the family. People cry and I go to cry with them. I celebrate Israeli Independence Day unlike other religious people, because I don’t want to offend those of my friends who do celebrate. This is the essence of Israel’s unity. If this war promotes unity in Israel – that would be my true reward”.
Photos Credit: Edi Israel
