Dr. Esi Sharon, the dentist who identified the body of the final deceased hostage, Ran Gvili, recounted the moving moments in an interview with Yedioth Aharonoth.
"When I opened the image that they say sent me from the open grave, I shouted, 'It's Rani, it's him.' I yelled to the doctor to enter the grave and pull out the body for final identification, which would determine with certainty that he returns home to his family, but inside I already knew. The initial image they sent me was enough for me to conclude that it was Rani. I knew his dental records and their identifying marks by heart. My entire body shook from excitement," recalled Dr. Sharon, who serves as the commander of the Dental Volunteer Unit of the Police Forensics Department.
She related how the process was conducted. "The engineering vehicle operators began to dig holes together with soldiers from the Search Unit, and the dentists entered them to take photos and initial identification. After some time, [pictures of] bodies that the dentists photographed while still in the graves and sent us began to accumulate. Through that method, throughout the night, we ruled out 200 bodies whose graves were opened."
Since the beginning of the war, Dr. Sharon, together with other dentists and forensic experts, worked to identify hundreds of victims of Hamas's massacre. The unit that she leads identified all deceased hostages who were returned from the Gaza Strip.
In the operation to return Ran Gvili, 20 dentists examined approximately 250 bodies in less than 24 hours.