Valeriia Dikshein is a native of Ukraine who visited children in Israel on October 7. She and her husband were among the first to arrive at the site of the festival near Ashkelon, where militants committed a mass crime against Israelis. Her memories are simply staggering.
Valeriia has faced the consequences of war crimes before because, from the very beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia on the territory of Ukraine, the Dikshein couple provided volunteer assistance and were involved in the evacuation of citizens to safe places. The oldest among the evacuees was more than 100 years old, and the youngest newborn was less than three days old.
However, Valeriia and Nakhman had never seen such a bloody picture as they saw in Kibbutz Reim, where the infamous music festival was held. According to the spouses, the corpses started on the road at a distance of 20-30 km to the place of events.
The trip’s principal purpose was to provide aid to the wounded and organize their evacuation, but it was impossible to find any survivors. Therefore, the volunteers packed bodies or their parts in bags and collected material for further identification. At the time, the news reported 260 dead, but the couple is sure that there were many more victims at that time. At the site of the festival, everything turned out to be strewn with bodies, and this picture made even some soldiers of the Israel Defence Forces petrified.
There were about a dozen volunteer teams of 4-6 people each, but there was a catastrophic lack of workforce. Despite the physical and moral exhaustion, they managed to sleep only a couple of hours at dawn, after which work was resumed.
The Dikshein couple thought they had already seen the worst and most cruel, but it turned out not to be so. Horrors awaited volunteers in civilian homes; there were decapitated children, one body with an ax in its head, severed limbs, gouged eyes, corpses with signs of brutal rape, etc.
There were families in which parents and children were tied opposite each other so that they could see how their relatives were killed.
Valeriia turned out to be the only woman among the volunteer teams, but at that moment, as she says, there was no emotion because she had to fulfill her mission. Her husband later said that the pictures he saw would stay in front of his eyes, perhaps for the rest of his life.
The editors of EURO-ATLANTIC UKRAINE are grateful to Valeriia and Nakhman Dikshein for their courage and indestructible life position.
