After 505 days in Hamas captivity, Omer Wenkert has broken his silence about his ordeal that pushed him to the brink of survival.
“We were intentionally starved. The captors put my life in danger for fun,” the freed hostage told attendees at the Israel Bar Association’s annual conference in Eilat.
Wenkert’s nightmare began on October 7,2023 when Hamas terrorists launched their devastating attack on Israel. During his captivity, Wenkert was confined to a tiny underground room that could barely contain a mattress.
“We were underground the whole time, and the temperature only increased there. There is no air, it is hard to breathe. You don’t really feel winter or summer,” he recalled.
His captors used starvation as both punishment and entertainment. For weeks at a time, Wenkert received no food at all—”not even a pita.” When food did arrive, it offered minimal nutrition. “There were no vitamins, no minerals. Only simple carbs to eat, like pita and rice,” he explained. “I can count on two fingers the times I ate anything that wasn’t empty carbs.”
One captor brought a bottle of pest spray and “made me stand in the corner of the hallway, and sprayed it across my face while forcing my eyes open. He made sure that everything I touched would be covered in the spray.” Guards would visit perhaps once daily, deliberately distorting his sense of time by saying “There is no time underground.”
Basic hygiene became a rare privilege. Wenkert showered from a water bottle roughly every 50 days and changed clothes perhaps four times over his days in captivity.
When conditions worsened during the IDF’s Rafah operation in May 2024, fellow hostages Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Eviatar David were moved into Wenkert’s cramped cell. Though their presence provided emotional support, the space became even more confined.
“It made it easier emotionally, but there was also much less room, and there was nowhere to walk,” Wenkert said.
To cope with the psychological torment, Wenkert would pace back and forth in his tiny space. “As soon as I could, I walked as much as I could. That’s how I would pass the time, back and forth.”
The physical toll was devastating. During his captivity, Wenkert had access to a mirror only three times. The final glimpse shocked him. “I only saw my face and saw that I was really skinny. I kept telling Guy and Eviatar, ‘I’m not that skinny.’ They said that my bones were visible,” he remembered.
When Wenkert was finally released in February and saw his reflection at the Re’im base, he was stunned by his appearance. Even after returning home, he struggled to choose clothing, not wanting his parents to worry more about how thin he looked.
His mother Niva described the emotional impact of seeing her son’s condition. “It was hard to see him so skinny, but the paleness was the hardest—we saw everything there: The humiliation and the abuse, the eyes that tell everything, and the body bore witness to the abuse.”
Though Wenkert has returned to freedom, the two men who shared his underground cell, Gilboa-Dalal and David, remain among the 58 hostages still held in Gaza, where only 20 are believed to be still alive survive.
Source link
