Freed Gaza hostage Omer Wenkert said he lived in “complete darkness, silence, [and] absolute fear” in an interview with N12 on Tuesday, his first since his release from captivity.
Wenkert recalled the moments before being taken hostage from the Supernova music festival on October 7. He had fled to a shelter at 6:30 a.m. when the rocket sirens began and knew that by around 7 a.m., terrorists had infiltrated the festival.
“Then gunfire erupted,” Wenkert recalled. “The last time I saw a clock, at 7:29, someone suddenly shouted to get inside, as terrorists arrived.”
“I heard ‘Allahu Akbar,’ the pin of a grenade being pulled, and then – boom. Three grenades exploded inside the shelter.”
“I saw bodies at the far end. People screamed,” Wenkert added, remembering that “at that moment, everyone went silent. Pure silence. The heat and smoke began filling the shelter. I started suffocating.”
Wenkert knew that some of those hiding with him had already been “burned alive,” adding that he decided to use their bodies to shield himself. “I didn’t want to get shot or hit by another grenade. I tried to bury my head under the bodies, but every explosion moved them.”
He said that a young woman, whose name he does not know, saved his life by grabbing a grenade that had landed four meters away from him and throwing it back outside. “My parents don’t deserve to receive my burnt body. I refuse to die like this. If I die, I die outside – on my feet,” Wenkert remembered telling himself.
Taken by terrorists
He recalled the moment when he left the shelter and noticed seven or eight terrorists standing less than 10 meters away.
One of the terrorists told him, “We’re not shooting. Come here.” At that moment, Wenkert realized he was being kidnapped.
The terrorists tied his feet and hands and loaded him onto the back of a pickup truck. As they entered Gaza, a mob gathered and “beat him brutally.”
Wenkert made sure to look at cameras, hoping at least one image would surface to prove that he was still alive, he told N12.
He estimated that within 20 minutes of entering the Gaza Strip, he was taken underground into the terror tunnels, where he was held at first with Thai hostages and fellow Israeli Liam Or.
Wenkert stated that the captives received three dates in the morning, half a pita at night, and half a liter of water for two people as their daily food rations. He also told N12 that he spoke to himself out loud for two hours a day in order to “stay sane.”
Wenkert added that his birthday “present” was being “brutally beaten with an iron rod,” but that he “looked the terrorist straight in the eyes” and “refused to show weakness.”
Life in the terror tunnels
When Liam Or was released after 53 days in November 2023, Wenkert claims the terrorists told him that he would “go home tomorrow or the day after,” but it took 452 more days. After Or’s release, Wenkert recalls that the terrorists moved him into a “one-meter-by-one-meter room,” with a hole dug for his waste. He thought they were “burying me alive.”
For 245 days, he was isolated in solitary confinement and “knew nothing about the outside world” until the door opened, and three other hostages, Tal Shoham, Evyatar David, and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, were “thrown” into the room.
Wenkert recalled that he hadn’t seen another person in so long that he told them, “I need a hug. I need human contact,” and that he and his fellow hostages shared everything, including “rationing their tiny food portions to avoid fights.”
He also shared that Hamas terrorists came to booby-trap the room at some point, telling the four Israelis, “If the IDF comes to rescue you, we will all die together.” Wenkert was upset when he found out that he was being released, but his three companions were remaining in captivity.
“I can’t stop thinking about them. I know what they’re going through; it’s unbearable,” he told N12. He described the moment that he was being released, with his hands shaking, but that “it was a victory.”
He added that he did not feel humiliated by Hamas’s hostage release ceremony, stating that it was “my victory. I finished the struggle. I fought, fought, fought, and won! I had a smile from ear to ear.”
Wenkert recalls catching a glimpse of David and Gilboa-Dalal inside a Hamas van, “smiling faintly, waving goodbye” and that “the small smile was everything.” Since his return, Wenkert has just one dream: to “build a family and become a father.” However, first, he said he would “not rest until every hostage is home.”
Wenkert suffers from an autoimmune disease, colitis, which causes ulcers to appear in the digestive tract, according to the Mayo Clinic.
In the moments leading up to his capture, Omer texted his parents that he was “scared to death.”
His family was informed hours after his abduction after Hamas posted a video of the young Omer strapped to a pickup truck in his underwear. Images later circulated showing Omer lying on the ground in Gaza.
Before being abducted, Omer was employed at the restaurant Nina Bianca, and he aspired to one day become a restaurant critic. He was enrolled to begin study at Shenkar College to study a restaurant management course - a dream paused by his captors.
In August 2024, it was announced that the Wenkert family's boutique wine marketing business had run into financial difficulties, and there was a mass mobilization calling to help the family.
The Knesset Workers's Committee and the Knesset's administration announced on August 15 that a special joint collaboration with the Wenkert family to purchase 1,200 cases of wine from their business in a project called "To the Life of Omer and for his return."
Danielle Greyman-Kennard and Bentzi Rubin contributed to this report.