The IDF Military Rabbinate was entrusted with the extraordinarily difficult task of identifying the victims of the October 7 massacre.
By Hezy Laing
In the aftermath of October 7, 2023, one of Israel’s most painful missions took place far from the battlefield: identifying the dead so that families could finally know what happened to their loved ones and give them a Jewish burial.
At Camp Shura near Ramle, the IDF Military Rabbinate, Israel Police, the National Institute of Forensic Medicine and hundreds of volunteers confronted approximately 1,200 bodies brought from the communities and festival sites attacked that morning.
The scale was unprecedented, and the condition of many remains made identification extraordinarily difficult.
Some bodies were burned, dismembered or reduced to fragments, while some body bags contained remains belonging to more than one person.
The teams therefore used several methods, including DNA, fingerprints, dental records, medical information, photographs, tattoos, scars and personal effects.
Dental identification became particularly important because teeth can survive conditions that destroy other identifying features.
Dr. Esi, a dentist involved in the operation, recalled how refrigerator trucks delivered body bags to Shura, while teams worked rapidly because determining who had been killed was also essential to establishing who might have been taken hostage.
For the rabbis, however, this was more than a forensic operation.
Chief Military Rabbi Brig. Gen. Eyal Krim described the profound religious responsibility involved, while Rabbi Udi Schwartz later recalled the first 48 hours at Shura as scenes that remained difficult to discuss even three years later.
For ZAKA volunteer Eli Turjeman, the mission meant working extraordinary hours, sometimes leaving the forensic center at 9 p.m., driving to Shura and continuing until 2 or 3 a.m. before returning to work again at 7.
What kept him going was seeing families desperately waiting for answers.
The emotional weight was enormous, but the purpose was equally clear: every successful identification meant another family could stop wondering, begin mourning and bury its loved one according to Jewish tradition.
The work also carried a deeper religious meaning.
As one ZAKA volunteer put it, the mission was “holy work”—ensuring that even amid the unprecedented horror of October 7, no victim would simply become an unidentified body.
The operation demonstrated that identifying the dead was not merely a technical task, but an act of dignity, responsibility and compassion.
