Omer Wenkert also recalls ‘coming to terms with death’ on October 7, spending nearly 200 days alone in a cell and refusing to let Hamas terrorists see him humiliated
Freed hostage Omer Wenkert said Tuesday that although he was cut off from the outside world throughout his 505 days in captivity, he always knew when talks for a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas had fallen through or when a senior Hamas operative was killed, because his terrorist captors would take it out on him.
“Every deal that fell through would bring up a lot of frustration, rage and anger,” Wenkert said of his captors in an interview with Channel 12 news, his first since returning from Gaza. “Not to mention when one of their fathers was killed, or their families, or when their senior officials were assassinated. You feel it. You know exactly what happened.”
He said that in those instances, his captors would beat him, spit on him, and force him to do strenuous physical exercise.
“I was very weak physically,” he said, adding that his captors’ goal was “humiliation.”
Asked if he felt humiliated at the ceremony Hamas held for him before his release, Wenkert responded: “It was victory for me. I finished the struggle. It didn’t humiliate me. I fought, fought, fought, fought, and won. I was smiling from ear to ear.”
In the interview, Wenkert gave a blow-by-blow account of his time in captivity, starting with the night of October 7, 2023, when he drove down to the Nova music festival with his best friend Kim Damti.
Damti was killed in the same bomb shelter Wenkert was taken from, although he didn’t discover her fate until his return to Israel.
Wenkert recalled ordering tickets to the party for himself and Damti, five minutes after midnight on October 7, 2023, and arriving at the party a few hours later. At 6:30 a.m., he said, rocket sirens began, and he fled with Damti to the bomb shelter.
Wenkert initially thought that “there was a group of three or four terrorists, and in a moment the IDF will come and take them out. You don’t consider the possibility they will reach Re’im; it’s almost five kilometers from the border. And then the shooting started.”
“What I remember is that the last time I saw on my watch was 7:29 a.m. and the same second I read that, someone says, ‘Get in, get in. There are terrorists.’ I hear, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ a grenade strike inside the shelter and everyone gets down. Explosion.”
After the first grenade exploded, Wenkert said, the terrorists began setting the bomb shelter on fire. “Before that, there was hysteria, people were yelling, but once they began burning us, it got quiet… I began choking a little, a lot of smoke, they threw grenades with certain materials, which suffocated us.
“The whole time I was busy — it’s terrible to say — with taking people’s bodies and putting them on my head to protect my head if they come again to shoot us, if a grenade comes… I wanted to push my head as far down as possible, but my head would slowly reveal itself each time because you put a body and then another grenade explodes, and things move.”
Wenkert recalled at that point seeing Damti, whose body was found several days later. “I think she was alive at that stage, but we didn’t talk, I couldn’t talk, I didn’t have air. I suddenly heard someone making a phone call, and she really yelled it, ‘They’re killing us, they’re burning us.’ She screamed it, and I think that’s the hardest thing I heard in the bomb shelter because it’s the moment you understand that, yeah, that’s what they’re doing to us.”
Wenkert recalled someone saying that the IDF had arrived. “Three girls immediately walked out. I think Kim was one of them… And then we heard shots fired, and one of them came back and said, ‘It isn’t the IDF, it isn’t the IDF, don’t go out.’”
Afterward, Wenkert said he saw another grenade fall near his head, and he thought he was going to die. However, a girl picked the grenade up and threw it out of the shelter. He said he did not know who the girl was or whether she survived or not.
Wenkert then decided to get up and walk out of the shelter. “If I’m dying, I’m dying outside, on my feet… I had a moment of what you would call ‘self-respect.’ I said I’m coming to terms with death, I’m ready for it, I’m going out now toward what I consider a sure death, and I accept it and want it.”
Upon exiting the shelter, Wenkert said one of the terrorists told him he would not shoot him. He then understood he was being kidnapped. “I saw them coming toward me, I wet my pants.”
Wenkert said he initially thought that no one would know he was kidnapped, so he walked toward a security camera to ensure there would be evidence that he was kidnapped alive. He recalled that he was then tied up and put on a pickup truck and was inside Gaza within 10 minutes.
Upon entering Gaza, Wenkert said he saw masses of people, some of whom hit him, including small children. Within 20 minutes, he said, he was underground.
After initially believing he was the only hostage, Wenkert met in a tunnel four Thai captives and Liam Or, who was later released. Wenkert said they were beaten badly and spent much of the time in complete darkness with little food or water.
Wenkert said he refused to let the terrorists see him humiliated. “If you want to beat me, beat me. You want to curse me, curse me. You want to not feed me, don’t feed me. It’s okay. I expect it and wait for it to come.”
Or was released after 53 days in captivity during the first ceasefire-hostage deal. Wenkert’s captors told him he would be released a day or two afterward, but instead, the ceasefire agreement ended, and Wenkert was transferred to a one- square-meter cell.
After Or’s release, Wenkert said he spent the next 197 days by himself, and he would spend two hours a day talking to himself.
Wenkert recalled remembering it was his birthday and being beaten by a terrorist. “I saw the dates — I was beaten that day. That was my birthday gift. That was the day I took a rod to the head. The door burst open, and the terrorist woke me with an absolute frenzy and insane aggression. He humiliated me, beat me, came at me with an iron rod. Again, I had made up my mind that I wouldn’t show weakness in front of them. So even as he did it, I looked him in the eyes.
“And after he left, I told myself, This is my birthday. I completely broke down and decided that, at this very moment, I would bless myself for my birthday. I said, ‘Okay, this is the lowest point I’ve ever experienced in my life.’ But still, I told myself — this is the moment I want to bless myself.”
While Wenkert said he did not have access to the news, he could sense current events based on the way his captors treated him, as the deaths of their family members or the breaking down of ceasefire talks would lead to beatings.
Eventually, three hostages — Tal Shoham, Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Delal — joined Wenkert. The hostages filled Wenkert in on the news they knew of while in captivity. Wenkert said each one had a role in captivity — Gilboa-Delal was in charge of splitting the food between them equally; David was in charge of hygiene; and Shoham served as a “spiritual guide.”
Shoham was released the same day as Wenkert; David and Gilboa-Delal were later seen in a Hamas video watching their release from inside a van.
Wenkert said that a moment has not gone by since his release in which he doesn’t think about David and Gilboa-Delal. “I don’t think ‘brothers’ is a word that suffices to describe our relationship. I have a need for them right now.”
Wenkert said he thinks the two are more afraid now of being neglected for a long time than of being killed.
On the day of his release, Wenkert said he recalled seeing the two waving at him from a van while he was on stage. “That little smile they sent me before I went home, that was the most moving thing I got from that ceremony.”
Wenkert said he feels no urge for revenge against his captors. “I don’t think about them at all. I don’t deal with them at all. I have no interest in it—it won’t fulfill me in any way. And that’s something Tal [Shoham] used to tell us a lot: ‘Don’t forget that in the end, he will remain trapped in his own evil, in the subhuman cruelty he carries with him. Not just him—all of them. And we will go back to living our lives. And that will be the victory.’”
Wenkert ended the interview by saying his dream is to become a father. “But there are people still there… I told them, I won’t rest for a moment until you return.”
As reported by The Times of Israel