Kibbutz Be’eri resident Dror Kaplun, 68, was murdered during the Hamas October 7 terror onslaught on southern Israel, the kibbutz announced Thursday. Kaplun had previously been presumed to be held hostage in Gaza.
His death was verified with the help of archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority after his DNA was found to match bones uncovered by the fence of Kibbutz Be’eri. The archaeologists have joined efforts to identify victims of Hamas’s October 7 massacres.
Kaplun’s wife Dr. Marcelle Frailich Kaplun was also murdered during the attack, when some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing some 240 hostages of all ages.
Be’eri was one of the hardest-hit communities in the attacks on southern Israel, with some 10 percent of its 1,100 residents killed.
In the hours after the attack, once they had stopped receiving WhatsApp messages from their father, Kaplun’s children saw a Hamas video showing Marcelle and Dror in their pajamas, seemingly unhurt, with bare feet and hands bound, being shoved along a Be’eri street by terrorists.
But the following day another video surfaced, showing the two lying on a sidewalk with several others, not moving.
While Marcelle was confirmed dead a week after the attacks, Dror’s phone was located a few days later in Gaza, leading to suspicions that he had been taken hostage.
Still looking for answers, Kaplun’s children returned to Kibbutz Be’eri with a film crew from Kan news a month after the attacks to collect dried blood and fragments that could possibly help reveal what happened that day. With the assistance of Kaplun’s son-in-law Guy Lenman, a forensic scientist, they were able to use the video footage to find the spot where Marcelle and Dror had been seen on the ground.
Lenman passed the evidence on to the authorities, urging them to come back to Be’eri and see what they could find.
Two months later, the family was notified that archaeologists had identified Kaplun’s remains.
Archaeologists have been using techniques from their experience in excavations of burnt and destroyed ancient sites to comb and sieve the ash from burnt houses in Be’eri, Kfar Aza and Nir Oz, three kibbutzim devastated in the attacks, in order to uncover and identify remains of attack victims.
The son of Holocaust survivors, Kaplun was born in Israel and spent his entire life in the Gaza periphery, living in Kibbutz Ruhama before moving to Marcelle’s home in Kibbutz Be’eri.
His children say he had been waiting eagerly for retirement, planning to spend his time traveling and being a grandfather to his five grandchildren.
The couple, who wed 20 years ago in a second marriage for both, resided in Be’eri where Frailich Kaplun had lived for 40 years.
