Hamas moved Israeli hostages from house to house in the south Gazan city of Khan Younis to avoid detection and supplied them with little food, family members have said.
Osnat Meiri told the Telegraph she was shocked to see her aunt, 78-year-old Ruti Munder, and cousin Keren Munder, 55, when she met them in a hospital outside Tel Aviv on Friday night. The pair were released in the first group of hostages alongside Ruti’s grandson, 9-year-old Ohad.
“They were a lot thinner, they were very tired and they were undernourished,” she said. “They were themselves, but there was that terror you could see in their eyes.”
While some hostages were kept in Hamas’ sprawling network of tunnels, the Munder family, who were kidnapped from Nir Oz kibbutz close to the southern tip of Gaza, were taken to the city of Khan Younis.
There, they were shuttled from one house to another without beds to sleep on, with some of the residences clearly commandeered from civilians. Ruti told her neice that one flat they moved to had been so hastily abandoned by its residents the washing machine was still running.
Food allocations were gradually cut as the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) offensive disrupted food supplies.
“At the beginning, there was more food but later it was significantly cut,” Meiri said. “All they had was pitta bread, cheese and some rice.”
Elderly women returning from captivity have lost between 8kg and 15kg, the Israeli health ministry said on Tuesday.
In Khan Younis, the Israelis were given benches to sleep on or waiting-room chairs that could have come from a public office or a hospital. They were lucky to have a sheet to cover themselves.
A portable radio was the Munders’ only window to the world and it brought them both good news and bad.
“A cousin from the other side of the family was speaking on the radio – my aunt heard him talking. That’s how she knew her son Roy was murdered,” Meiri said.
The same broadcast mentioned that her husband, Avraham, who turns 79 this week, was kidnapped but is still alive.
The Munder family believes he is being held at another location in Gaza.
Despite her ordeal, 78-year-old Ruti Munder was seen laughing with soldiers at an Israeli Defense Force base and has emerged as one of the most resilient hostages, according to her niece.
“My aunt said she was so lucky: she had never spent so much time together with her daughter and grandson. It gave them strength,” Meiri said, contrasting her experience with a number of children kidnapped alone or separated from their parents in captivity.
While the families of the majority of hostages that were released in recent days said their relatives were not subject to physical violence, reports of mistreatment began to surface on Tuesday.
Deborah Cohen, an aunt of 12-year-old Eitan Yahalomi, told French BFM TV that Hamas fighters beat the boy in captivity.
“When he arrived in Gaza, all residents, everyone, beat him,” she said. “Every time a child cried, the terrorists would threaten them with a gun to keep quiet.”
Most hostages returned in good physical shape, including 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Yaffa Adar, who was discharged from hospital on Tuesday in front of cheering staff.
Others like Ruti Munder were ordered to stay at the hospital for a few more days for doctors to monitor their condition.
In one of the first personal accounts to emerge, Ruti Munder told Israel’s Channel 13 News on Tuesday how captives had slept on plastic chairs in a “suffocating” room while they were held by Hamas.
She said that people were left hungry as the “economic situation” in Gaza worsened amid Israeli bombardment.
“It was very difficult,” she told reporters.
The vast majority of the hostages themselves have not yet faced the press, with doctors warning they remain in a delicate state.
Itai Pessach, director of Sheba Medical Centre’s children’s hospital, said that his staff heard “very difficult and complex stories from the [hostages’] time in Hamas captivity without elaborating and warned that “there’s a very, very long way go to before they are healed”.
A 12-year-old Israeli hostage in Gaza was beaten and forced to watch videos of Hamas terrorists massacring civilians, his family has claimed.
Eitan Yahalomi was also among abducted children who were threatened by men with rifles when they cried, his relatives said.
With more than 60 of the estimated 240 hostages now freed, details are emerging of the intimidating and spartan conditions in which they were held for weeks.
Hostages have spoken of “suffocating” rooms, meagre food rations, and virtually no information from the outside world.
The father of a released 9-year-old girl said his daughter still speaks in whispers, such was the fear instilled by her Hamas captors.
Deborah Cohen has been speaking about the treatment of Eitan, her young nephew, telling journalists: “When he arrived in Gaza, all of the residents, all of them, beat him up. He’s a 12-year-old child.”
Cohen said her son had been forced to watch footage of the Oct 7 attacks.
She spoke of the family’s happiness when the boy was released, but added: “Now I know this, I worry. It’s unimaginable. I don’t know who could do such a thing.”
Meanwhile, Ruti Munder, a 78-year-old, said captives were left hungry as the “economic situation” in Gaza worsened under the Israeli bombardment.
Hamas terrorists had forced her to sleep on a bench without a mattress, she said. Eventually she was given a sheet, but young boys and girls were among the many others who had to sleep without one.
“We covered ourselves with a sheet. The boys slept under the benches, on the ground, because we wanted them next to us,” she told Israel’s Channel 13.
She said the conditions were “suffocating” because her captors prevented her opening the blinds, and they would only permit the window to be opened “a crack”.
On October 7, the family were loaded on to a truck covered in a blanket to prevent them from seeing their kidnappers.
Rita Munder learned that her son, Roy, had been murdered in the kibbutz of Nir Oz when she overheard the news on a radio used by the guards.
The plight of her grandson, Ohad, who was also captured, became well known in Israel after his hometown celebrated his 9th birthday in his absence by distributing yellow balloons around the streets.
The emotional video of him running to greet his father upon his release has gone viral in Israel.
However, indications of potentially long-lasting trauma, particularly to the younger hostages, are beginning to emerge.
The father of Emily Hand, a 9-year-old Irish-Israeli hostage said she cries herself to sleep.
“She’s coming out slowly, little by little,” he told US media. “The most shocking, disturbing part of meeting her was that she was just whispering, you couldn’t hear her. I had to put my ear on her lips.”
He said this was a result of hostages being ordered to keep their voices down by their captors, adding: “She’s been conditioned not to make any noise.”
As of Wednesday, nine children were still believed to be held hostage in Gaza, 54 days after the Hamas attack.
A sixth batch of hostages was expected to be released later on Wednesday, with Hamas reported to be seeking a four-day extension to the Gaza truce, potentially paving the way for a further 40 victims to be freed.
Other hostages have told family members that their diet deteriorated the longer they stayed in captivity. The possibility of chicken, rice, canned hummus and cheese was offered at first, but food soon dwindled to as little as two slices of bread per day.
Elma Avraham, 84, who has multiple medical conditions, went 50 days without her medication. Upon her release, she was transferred to hospital “in a serious and life-threatening condition”. Her daughter, Tali Amano, said: “My mother arrived hours before we would have lost her.”
However, the family of Yocheved Lifschitz, who was kidnapped from her home at Nir Oz, said she was given access to a doctor in the two weeks she was held by Hamas.
The peace activist reported that she was beaten with sticks and taken into a “spider’s web of tunnels”, but that later she was visited by a doctor “every two or three days”.
Roni Krivoi, a 25-year-old Russian-Israeli hostage, escaped from Hamas and hid for four days before he was recaptured by Gazans and returned to the militants before being released on Sunday.
“He said he was taken by terrorists, and they brought him into a building. But the building was destroyed [by Israeli bombing], and he was able to flee,” Yelena Magid, his aunt, told Kan Radio on Monday.
“He was trying to get to the border, but I think because he didn’t have the resources to know where he was and which direction to flee, he had some trouble.”
'I’m not scared, nor do I have hope for the future,' said one woman.