How will we remember October 7?

Three years later and at times October 7 still feels like yesterday.

For the victims and their families time has stood still, stuck in the moment of the last hug, smile and time they heard the sound of their voices. For the survivors and for the first responders who answered the call for help that morning, time has not moved forward either. Trauma from the scenes of death and destruction still haunt their minds eye. But the calendar still says three years has past since that infamous day.

Across Israel and the Jewish world, we are still trying to make sense of what happened. Many conversations focus on how such a catastrophe could have befallen the Jewish state, defended by one of the strongest armies in the world. Others focus on how our enemies still seek our annihilation. Then there are the quieter conversations focused on stories of sacrifice, selflessness and survival that are intertwined with the horrors of the day.

Our Jewish tradition commands us to remember. It has been woven into our national consciousness. We remember slavery in Egypt. We mourn the destruction of the Temples. We recall attempted systematic extermination of our ancestors, both recent and ancient. But with each tragedy we cling to the hope that the suffering also paves way for moments of jubilee. The story of slavery is juxtaposed to the birth of the Nation of Israel. The desecration and destruction of both Holy Temples in Jerusalem has served as inspiration for millennia of prayer and hope of rebirth. Even the attempts to annihilate the Jewish people are interconnected to our return to our ancestral Homeland. It's like the age old Jewish joke, they came tried to destroy us, G-d saved us, let's eat.

We do not have to look very far for an answer.

Even before Israel’s leadership fully grasped the magnitude of what was happening that morning, hundreds of United Hatzalah volunteers had already made a decision. They were going south.

There was no grand order telling them to go. For many, the decision was intensely personal. They heard the call for help and understood that people were in danger. They put on their orange vests, grabbed their medic bags and drove toward the gunfire.

By the end of that first day, more than 1,500 United Hatzalah volunteers were engaged in treating and evacuating the wounded.

Three years later, United Hatzalah founder and president Eli Beer retraced the steps taken by some of those volunteers. We returned to the Nova festival grounds and to communities along the Gaza border whose names were once familiar only to those who lived there, but are now etched into our national story.

At every stop, another story surfaced.

Alex Shamis had just finished a night shift as a nurse at Assuta Ashdod Hospital when the attack began. He quickly returned home to Sderot to make sure his family was safe. Then he took a United Hatzalah mobile intensive care ambulance and headed out. He treated soldiers and civilians alike. One soldier he treated had been shot in the head. Afterwards he continued towards the Nova festival and Be’eri to treat those wounded there. Years later, he says the faces of the wounded remain with him.

Yuval Schlafman reached Kfar Aza and spent the day evacuating wounded and dead. At one point, with no ambulance available, he helped place a critically wounded officer into a white pickup truck and raced him toward a helicopter evacuation point. Later, he helped evacuate a mother and her four children from a shelter. Just then another siren sounded and he used his body to cover the family. To calm the children, Schlafman played music on his phone and everyone began singing. One child later told him that his father had been killed, but that Schlafman had saved the rest of his family.

David Milgram was on his way to synagogue in Jerusalem when the calls began. He put his siddur back on the shelf and ran to the United Hatzalah Dispatch Center. Soon he was in the first United Hatzalah ambulance leaving Jerusalem for the south. Near the Heletz Interchange, a car stopped them. Two young men inside had been shot while escaping the Nova Festival. Until that moment, Milgram thought he was responding to rocket casualties. The wounded men told him terrorists had opened fire on their car and killed their friend.

Suddenly, the unknown begins to take shape.

Dr. Shlomo Gensler’s October 7th began on the telephone, guiding terrified people trapped inside safe rooms. One caller was trying to care for her badly wounded father in Kfar Aza while gunfire could be heard outside. Gensler eventually headed south himself and worked through the night. Hours later, he assisted caring for children who were rescued after witnessing their parents being murdered. It was at that moment when he could no longer hold back his tears. He stepped away, cried, then returned to treating patients.

Chezi Rosenbaum traveled the roads around Kfar Aza, Sderot and Netivot, finding casualty after casualty along Routes 232 and 34. He has called that stretch the “Valley of Death.” Among the memories that stayed with him was the face of a wounded soldier he could not save. Like so many responders, Rosenbaum discovered that leaving the scene did not mean the scene left them.

At Shuva Junction, paramedic Shirel Pupkin and other medical personnel established an improvised field hospital while the area remained under threat. Casualties kept arriving, soldiers and civilians alike. There was no time to absorb what was happening. There was just the patient in front of them, and the next patient, and then the one after that.

In Sderot, Rabbi Chaim Sassi went out to help the wounded while terrorists were still operating in the city. He was shot three times. Wounded, he continued trying to provide care to others. Two years later, he and Pupkin were awarded the President’s Medal for Civilian Heroism.

These are just seven stories. Seven individuals. Seven pieces of a puzzle no one wants to construct. Yet they give us the structure for our remembrance. We tell them not to reopen fresh wounds but to heal them.  

October 7 was a day of almost unimaginable darkness, but darkness was not the only thing present. There were people running toward strangers. There were doctors treating the wounded under fire. There were medics carrying children out of shattered communities. There were volunteers who understood that another human being needed them and decided that was reason enough to risk everything.

This is our national story.

Three years later, we can still say what generations before us said after confronting darkness far greater than any people should have to bear.

We are still here, and we will always remember.