Simcha Greiniman has dedicated his life to serving others, as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, and as a volunteer with ZAKA, Israel’s premier search, rescue, and recovery organization. He played a vital role in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.
Greiniman was born and raised in Israel. He spent time in the United States while his father, who has passed away, underwent medical treatments. The experience coupled with his religious upbringing instilled a sense of duty to care for others.
By the time he was 15, Greiniman was already a medic volunteer for ZAKA. He went on to serve in the IDF’s special forces unit responsible for disaster response worldwide–a 26 year career so far–while maintaining his role with ZAKA.
On Oct. 7, Greiniman received a call that changed his life. “I got the call from the IDF, and I got the codes [indicating] that we were dealing with war, not a regular attack.” Then came a chilling instruction: “Bring the truck,” he was told. He remembered the last time ZAKA’s supply truck was used—to transport bodies of victims from a previous tragedy.
Greiniman and his team set out toward Ashkelon and were initially directed to a hospital. “All of a sudden, I get a call,” he says. The new instruction was to head into an area of haunting devastation.
He recalls “cars in flames, bodies all over the highway,” and the voice on the other end of the phone warning him not to stop. Terrorists were still in the fields surrounding the road, and the burning cars were struck by RPGs just minutes before. “You’re a target. Just start driving,” the IDF told him.
Greiniman and his team spend more than five hours retrieving bodies while under constant threat of attack. “Seventy-two bodies, from floor to ceiling, the truck was loaded,” he says. Over the next two and a half weeks, Greiniman led the effort to retrieve and identify the remains of victims from across the region. “Over 600 bodies that night alone,” he says.
He and his team spent the next two and a half weeks going through every kibbutz to collect the bodies of the attack. He was also tasked with ensuring that every location was cleared for families so they could return without witnessing the horrors that were left behind.
The emotional toll is unimaginable. “That’s the worst PTSD you can go through,” he says. He describes cleaning a single room in Kfar Aza, the site of one of the worst massacres. “It took 18.5 hours to clean that room.” He recalls standing there, scrubbing every surface to retrieve every last human fragment. “You can’t even cry because your brain cannot process it.”
Greiniman has since taken on an additional role as the international spokesperson for ZAKA. He briefs international journalists and has spoken before the United Nations. “I came to speak about women’s rights in the UN–it wasn’t easy at all,” he says. He provided evidence to the UN of atrocities that were committed against Israeli women, and provided 200,000 images and videos ZAKA members took to document the scenes they visited. “We have all the evidence, the hard evidence.”
Despite his schedule, Greiniman says there is an urgent need to care for those who have borne witness to the horrors of the Hamas attack. “ZAKA members are going through the hardest PTSD.”
In the belief that conventional therapy is not enough, he and his team have established a resilience program for volunteers. He says that one volunteer found himself unable to care for his newborn because of the atrocities he witnessed against children. He “couldn’t even change a diaper,” Greiniman says. But after participating in the resilience program, the volunteer sent Greiniman a photo—a picture of himself holding his baby for the first time in months. “He calls me up crying, ‘I’m able to hold my child,’” Greiniman says.
Greiniman recently helped forge a partnership between ZAKA and the National Sheriffs’ Association in the United States to bring Israeli expertise in mass casualty response to American law enforcement. “For the first time in history, ZAKA is collaborating to be able to train communities here in the US,” he says.
It is yet another way in which he continues to fulfill his life’s mission—caring for those in crisis, honoring the dead, and ensuring that the stories of Oct. 7 are never forgotten.
