For the families of several hostages, the reassurance of receiving first signs of life from their loved ones in Gaza in recent days was mixed with distress at hearing of the conditions in which they are being kept – and for some, the abuse to which Hamas subjected them.

The families of twins Gali and Ziv Berman, 27, of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Nova festival survivors Eliya Cohen, 26, and Alon Ohel, who turned 24 on Monday, and IDF soldier Nimrod Cohen, 20, learned from recently released hostages that their loved ones were alive.

Kibbutz Kissufim announced that Shlomo Mansour, 86, a survivor of the Holocaust-era Farhoud pogrom in Baghdad, was murdered on Oct. 7, and that Hamas had brought his body to Gaza, where it remains. Mansour was expected to be released in the first stage of the hostage release and cease-fire deal, which Hamas said on Wednesday that it would delay, claiming Israeli violations.

Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi were released from Gaza on Saturday visibly emaciated and told their families of the horrific conditions under which Hamas held them. The mothers of Ohel and Eliya Cohen said that they learned from the released hostages that their sons had been abused.

Eliya’s mother said that he had been hung by his feet, gagged and burned. He and Ohel have been reportedly shackled for over a year.

“I don’t know how to process it,” Alon’s mother, Idit Ohel, told Israel’s Channel 12 on Sunday. “Alon has basically spent the entire time with Eli Sharabi and Or Levy, since November [2023] … We now know Alon was injured in his eye, he sees shadows in one eye. He has shrapnel in one eye, in his shoulder and in his hand. Aloni was chained in shackles the entire time and received almost no food, barely one pita a day for a very long time, over a year.”

“Everything you see on Eli and Or, Alon is experiencing it now,” she added. 

Eliya Cohen’s mother, Sigi, told Israel Hayom that she learned her son had been held with the hostages released on Saturday. “When you see [the freed hostages], you realize that they’re going through a Holocaust,” she said.

“They were chained the entire time in captivity,” Sigi Cohen said. “It’s incomprehensible. We know that he was injured in his leg, and many months have gone by and he has not received care … It is terrifying to hear that he is being tortured right now.”

The parents of the hostages used Holocaust-related language to describe their sons’ conditions. Cohen and Ohel’s mothers both used the term selektziya, referring to the determination by Nazi officials at the entrance to Auschwitz of who would be sent to the gas chambers and who to hard labor, to refer to the fact that their sons were not included in the first stage of released hostages, comprised of women, the elderly and humanitarian cases.

“What is this selektziya?” Idit Ohel asked. “How is Alon, in his situation, not considered a humanitarian case? … I will never understand it.”

Ohel said her son has a grandfather and great-grandfather who survived concentration camps: “They too came out weighing 30 kg and survived and established families. Alon has this heritage. We know he is strong, but we need our country and the world to scream and not let this happen any longer.” 

Nimrod Cohen’s father, Yehuda, said that one of the hostages had been with his son from December 2023 to May 2024, and grew close over that time. They were only above ground for two weeks of that time, but were not chained. Cohen said that the now-freed hostage had asked his Hamas captors about Nimrod’s condition on Friday, before he was released. Cohen said that the captors reportedly spoke about Nimrod in the present tense and said that he was nearby. 

Levy, Sharabi and Ben Ami reported being chained for months, rendering them unable to walk. Levy was held in a tunnel with a ceiling too low for him to stand, and had to relearn how to walk in the days before being released. 

The men were held barefoot in dark tunnels, with almost no exposure to fresh air or sunlight, Israel’s Channel 12 reported. They slept on the ground, were deprived of water, were not allowed to wash for weeks at a time and were only given toilet access twice a day. They were given small portions of pita bread, and lost 33-44 lbs from malnutrition; Hamas gave them more food in the days before their release, but not enough to hide that they had been starved.

The hostages were regularly beaten, some were shot and the wounds were not treated.

Some of the hostages did not know that their families were murdered; during the ceremony in which Hamas forced hostages to participate, Sharabi said he looked forward to being reunited with his wife and daughters. Throughout their captivity, Hamas repeatedly lied to the hostages that they were being released and regularly threatened them at gunpoint.

The hostages said they counted the days in order to stay sane, and they were permitted to hold Shabbat services.

Prof. Hagai Levine, head of the Hostage Families Forum health team, said in a press briefing on Monday that the hostages were undergoing “intentional torture.” Those who returned were “starved” and had dangerous infections.

“There is a clear and present danger to the hostages’ lives: all of them,” he said. “They are subject to deliberate starvation and severe water deprivation…[and] are undergoing extreme physical and emotional abuse.” 

“All of them are in critical condition, in the sense their lives are at stake. I don’t know how many more days or weeks they will survive. This delay in their release will probably cost lives, so we have to have this feeling of urgency for their release,” Levine added.