Eitan Horn, a freed hostage in his late 30s, lost about half his body weight and was forced to walk for about 12 hours through the tunnels beneath Gaza when his captors wanted to move him, his sister-in-law, Dalia Cusnir, has said.
The wife of another survivor of Hamas captivity, Elkana Bohbot, said in a video statement that he had returned with severe stomach pain because his captors had tried to fatten him up before his release, after months of receiving hardly any food.
And the friends of one released hostage, Yosef-Chaim Ohana, told Israeli television on Thursday that he had been so cut off from the world for the past two years that he had not heard of ChatGPT.
When Hamas returned the last 20 living hostages it was holding to Israel on Monday, their families, like many Israelis, waited with trepidation to find out the condition of the captives who had been kept largely incommunicado with little food and sometimes shackled. In many cases, they were held in dank, dark tunnels deep under Gaza.
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They had all been seized, along with scores of others, during the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023, that set off the devastating two-year war in the Palestinian enclave.
Released under the terms of a ceasefire deal that came into effect a week ago, they were exchanged for nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners held by Israel.
Over the past year, some of the captives had been forced to appear in hostage videos looking emaciated, distressed and pleading for their lives.
The first sightings of them as former hostages brought some relief. They emerged looking thin and pale, but they were all walking.
“Every one of them has endured untold adversity and horrors,” said Prof Itai Pessach, vice-president of Sheba Medical Center, near Tel Aviv, and founder of its hostage medical team, regarding the condition of the 10 former hostages recuperating at the hospital.
The hostages treated at Sheba had all arrived in stable condition, he said. But “they will probably need weeks, months and even years to heal,” he said.
After undergoing medical checks and receiving initial medical, nutritional and psychological care, two of the former captives, Nimrod Cohen and Horn, were released on Thursday from Ichilov hospital, also known as the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. Crowds waited on the streets near their homes to greet them.
Horn, one of the older hostages released this week, arrived home to Kfar Saba, in central Israel, soon after Tamir Nimrodi, another former hostage, was buried in the cemetery there, reflecting the kind of emotional seesaw that many Israelis are experiencing. Nimrodi was a soldier and taken alive but killed in captivity. His body was returned this week.
Doctors and relatives have not revealed much about the former hostages’ experiences, saying it is not their story to tell. Nevertheless, some details have begun to emerge about the hostages’ time in captivity.
Idit Ohel, the mother of Alon Ohel, a pianist who was taken captive, injured, as he tried to flee the Nova music festival, said he had lived for two years with shrapnel in his right eye and his head. He would undergo surgery, she said, adding that the doctors were optimistic that his eyesight could improve significantly.
Ohel said her son had returned exhausted. But a short while after arriving at Beilinson hospital, also known as Rabin Medical Center, near Tel Aviv, he sat down to play a piano.
The mother of a freed soldier, Matan Angrest, told reporters at the hospital where he is recuperating that he was relearning what normal life means – simple things “like sitting down to eat with a knife and fork”.
Long deprived of nature, one group of hostages was taken to the beach to watch the sunset with their families.
Some hostages had been held alone for nearly the entire two years, according to relatives.
One of them, Rom Braslavski, was filmed on Thursday saying he felt like he had been “reborn.” Presented with a new iPhone 17, he said he would not know how to use it.
Avi Ohana, father of Yosef-Chaim Ohana, told reporters that his son had persuaded his captors not to kill him several times, arguing that they had nothing to gain from it, and that he was more valuable to them alive.
In an Instagram post, Bar Kupershtein, said he had been through a tough period, “to put it mildly.” He thanked everyone who had prayed for him and had not given up on him, and most of all, “the Creator, the Father in Heaven”.
“It has taken me some time to adjust,” he said. “But the most important thing is that I am here, with my family, my friends and the people I love.” – This article originally appeared in the New York Times.
