As Dr. When Yael Mozer-Glassberg, a senior physician at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Israel, was initially asked to join the team of people who would be responsible for receiving child hostages returning to Israel, she responded immediately.
“Oh my God, no,” she remembered saying to herself. “But how could I say no? It’s a national mission.”
She was selected to join a group in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, made up of the first medical professionals to care for a group of children and their mothers returning to Israel. During the ceasefire, which lasted from November 24 to December 1, the hospital admitted 19 children and six women who were kidnapped in Israel on October 7 by Hamas and other militant groups.
To the initial surprise of many, the children quickly spoke freely about their experiences. Social workers and psychologists listened intently as the children told their stories in voices barely above a whisper.
One child said he kept track of time by tearing off pieces of his fingernails and saving the clippings to count the days. Dr. Efrat Bron-Harlev, the director of the Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel, said another child asked a barrage of questions: “Are we allowed to look out the window?” Are we allowed to open the door? Can we leave the room?” Another child said she was confused when she saw people waiting for her because she was told that no one was looking for her, that no one cared about her and that there was no Israel for her would give more.
Sometimes a social worker or psychologist would leave the room to cry.
Dr. Efrat Bron-Harlev in her office next to a painting of Amelia Aloni, 5, hugging her grandmother after her liberation from Gaza. Photo credit: Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
“They talked about death like they were going to the grocery store and talking about what ice cream they were going to buy,” Dr. Mozer Glassberg.
In Gaza, too, the war has hit women and children particularly hard. They are many of the 15,000 people reported to have been killed in Gaza since the war began on October 7, according to UN and health officials in Gaza.
Dr. Bron-Harlev had long planned how her hospital would receive the children held hostage. A little over a week after October 7, she sent an email to the Ministry of Health: “Let us think of optimistic days when children will return from captivity.”
She began building a team that resembled an entirely new station. She didn’t know if any hostages had suffered sexual trauma, she said, so she assembled a team made up mostly of women. She didn’t know if someone would return with acute physical trauma, so she assembled a standby team that included the head of the intensive care unit, the head of anesthesiology, the head of the surgical team and the head of orthopedics.
Subsequently, Dr. Bron-Harlev created a small inner circle that included senior doctors and nurses, social workers and psychologists, hospital staff and kitchen staff. Food could be a big problem, she thought. What would they be able to endure and what would they want?
When the children arrived, some with their mothers, they were slowly greeted. They first reunited with their families and were given time together. The medical teams treated each child and mother carefully.
“We took it slowly, one step in, two steps out, to find out what their needs were,” said Efrat Harel, director of social services at the medical center. Each patient was assigned a doctor, a nurse, a social worker and a psychologist.
They found patients who had lost 10 to 15 percent of their body weight, whose heads were full of lice and torsos full of bites, and whose hygiene was unlike anything the hospital had ever seen. Many bathed only once during captivity, just before their release, using a bucket of cold water and a rag.
A patient felt comfortable with Dr. Mozer-Glassberg was particularly comfortable, so she spent four days slowly brushing the girl’s hair with a lice comb and crying quietly. Dr. Mozer-Glassberg recalled asking if she should shave her head because the infestation was so severe. “Eventually they will disappear,” Dr. assured her. Mozer-Glassberg about lice. “They will go.”
She had initially feared that the children might develop refeeding syndrome, a dangerous condition in which someone who is malnourished begins to eat normally again before the body can digest larger portions.
However, many children took a few small bites while eating and then put the food aside. When asked why, Dr. Mozer-Glassberg: “So that there is enough food for the rest of the day.”
Despite reassurances that more food was available, many children struggled to eat.
Then, at 1 a.m. on his second night in the hospital, a child asked for schnitzel and mashed potatoes – a happy development – and the kitchen staff enthusiastically prepared the food, finding a nice plate, cutlery and glass to serve it with.
Children began speaking in voices louder than a whisper and playing with relatives outside their rooms.
But questions and worries still haunt her parents and carers.
A mother recounted how she and her child were taken to Gaza on a tractor along with a seriously injured soldier. When they reached Gaza, her daughter was covered in blood and the child asked the mother, “What happened to the man who poured red?” Dr. Bron-Harlev and translated.
The child still asks about the man. His mother doesn’t know what happened to him.
On Monday, after sirens went off in Petah Tikva and the girl and her mother were sent to a safe room at the hospital, the girl asked her mother if they would return to the tunnels. When she reassured her daughter that this was not the case, the girl asked if they would relocate, as they did in Gaza.
The hospital’s work was heartbreaking and staff turned to each other for support, said Dani Lotan, director of psychological services at Schneider Children’s. Many spoke of having to slow down to realize that they could not rehabilitate the children and mothers in a day or two or “compensate them for everything they have lost,” Mr. Lotan said.
Like much of Israel, Dr. Mozer-Glassberg said she can treat two other children: Kfir Bibas, who was nine months old when he was kidnapped along with his four-year-old brother Ariel Bibas. Hamas claimed that both children and their mother Shiri were killed by Israeli airstrikes, but Israeli officials have not confirmed the report. The Bibas family said they hoped the claims would be “refuted by military officials.”
While Dr. As Mozer-Glassberg spoke, a wailing siren began to sound outside and her phone announced in Hebrew “tzevah adom” – red alert.
“Oh,” she said, grabbing her things and walking with the rest of the staff to a nearby stairwell where Israel’s Iron Dome defense system could be heard intercepting missiles.
Their work and the war were far from over.
— Talya Minsberg Talya Minsberg spoke to a half-dozen staff members at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv.