Photojournalist Chen Schimmel, speaking at the Jerusalem Post Miami Summit, recounted her journey to Kibbutz Be’eri after the Hamas massacres on October 7, and her photographic testimony of the atrocities that took place, which are documented in her recently released book “October 7th: Bearing Witness.”
Recalling her experiences photographing the devastation of Kibbutz Be’eri after the massacre, she said, “The streets were silent. The smell still lingered. Everything was still. Bikes were lying where children had left them, car doors left open, bullet casings scattered across the ground, the houses were scorched, windows blown out, and bullet holes everywhere. Life had been frozen in the middle of itself and then shattered.”
“Since that day,” she shared, “I haven’t stopped documenting. I have traveled up and down the country, photographing inside Gaza, on the Lebanese border, with hostage families, injured soldiers, evacuees, Nova survivors, and ZAKA members. Amidst the pain and the darkness, I was surprised to discover a quiet hope, an unshakable resilience of our people, a nation that refuses to be defined by what tried to break it.”
Schimmel described several of the images in her book, including “Holy Work,” which was taken a few weeks after the massacre in Kibbutz Be’eri. “It shows a Zaka volunteer on his hands and knees,” Schimmel explained, “carefully collecting blood from the floor of a home where an elderly man was bludgeoned to death. Gathering it with such care, with reverence, in an act of ultimate respect.
“Holy Work” is one of the most profound and heartbreaking photographs I’ve captured, because it doesn’t just show the horror of what happened. It shows what we do in response. It shows the humanity and the strength, the sacredness of this work.”
The photograph was awarded the Photo of the Year at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv’s Local Testimony 2024 photojournalism competition, the highest honor for photography in Israel.
Schimmel also described a second photograph, entitled “God’s Rays and Buckets,” which shows two members of the Haran family from Be’eri sitting amongst the devastation of their parents’ bedroom. “You see the darkness, and you see the destruction, and yet the light is there,” she said. “It breaks through ever so softly. This moment and the photograph that holds it left its mark on me because it captures something of who we are as a people – a people who know how to spin light out of darkness, who take what has been shattered and refuse for that to be the end of the story.”
“It is not an easy book,” said Schimmel, “but it is a deeply human one, a record of who we are and the light that rises from so much darkness. These stories belong to us all. They must never be forgotten, and they must never be denied, because the story is not over, and neither is the light.”
Written in collaboration with Chen Schimmel