Shortly after Hamas’s October 7 murderous onslaught on southern Israel, University of Haifa student Alon Penzel set out to compile raw, first-person accounts of the horrors.

These graphic impressions collected by the grandson of Holocaust survivors became an English-language book, “Testimonies Without Boundaries: Israel: October 7th, 2023,” that documents the dark trail of the Hamas massacre.

The 23-year-old first-time author interviewed more than 60 people, including volunteers from ZAKA, an organization that handles human remains after terrorist attacks; survivors of the Supernova festival, where 360 people were slaughtered; and Dr. Chen Kugel, director of the National Center of Forensic Medicine, also called Abu Kabir, where burned and mutilated victims’ bodies were taken to be identified.

From the start Penzel, aiming for the events to never be forgotten, said he wanted his interviewees to spare no details. They “appreciated my determination,” he said.

“They immediately realized the initiative’s significance and my ambition to commemorate what happened,” Penzel said. “They were able, step by step, to open up to me.”

The interviews are uncensored and horrific. Appearing just as shocked by the atrocities as his readers might be, Penzel serves as an unblinking guide to the murders of 1,200 people in southern Israel and the abduction of 251 to the Gaza Strip.

Beyond the documentation, however, what is most important to Penzel is that the testimonies be heard, he told The Times of Israel. To that end, Israel’s Foreign Ministry offered to help disseminate the book through its offices.

Dan Oryan, director of civic diplomacy at the Foreign Ministry, told The Times of Israel that he is always looking for different means to ensure that “people understand what happened on October 7.”

He said that he will share the book with embassies and visiting delegations. He believes that it is easier for Penzel to reach young people because they’re “more keen to hear a young person telling them the details from a personal point of view.”

I knew that people would start denying, so I started writing the book and wanted it out as soon as possible

International youth is one of the target audiences of the book: After Penzel wrote the book, he turned to Israel-Is, an organization that empowers young Israelis to tell their unique life stories as a way to connect with their peers worldwide.

The organization provided funding to publish the book in Hebrew and in English, with Sefrei Niv and Spines, two self-publishing companies, said Eden Sades Pareenty, CFO at Israel-Is.

“We sponsored Alon’s initiative because we see the book is an educational tool for young people,” Pareenty said, adding that Penzel will travel with Israel-Is delegations to speak to university students abroad.

“Testimonies Without Boundaries” was briefly banned on Amazon for violating the company’s content guidelines, Penzel said. According to Jewish Insider, the e-commerce bookseller made the title available again after a reporter inquired why the book was rejected. Penzel said it is now on sale on all of Amazon’s international websites and has sold over 4,000 copies.

Soon after October 7, Penzel, who served in the IDF as a spokesperson for COGAT, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, realized that people around the world would start denying what happened, Penzel told The Times of Israel.

On his own initiative, he set out to uncover facts and details to prove that the accounts of rapes of women and men, beheadings, murders, burnings, and abuse were real. He transcribes stories of brutality, not to sensationalize but rather to bear witness.

“I knew that people would start denying,” he said. “So I started writing the book and wanted it out as soon as possible.”

In a report released on Wednesday, Human Rights Watch said it “found evidence of acts of sexual and gender-based violence by fighters including forced nudity, and the posting without consent of sexualized images on social media.” Unfortunately, some ZAKA volunteers’ stories proved to be untrue, which added to global skepticism of October 7 rapes and brutality.

Penzel said that all the testimonies in his book were verified by the Israel Police as well as Lahav 433, the police’s criminal investigation division. Oryan said the Foreign Ministry also checked and confirmed the facts in the book.

The first story he recounts in the book resonated profoundly with him, he said.

Penzel relates how Simcha Greinman, a volunteer at ZAKA for the past 32 years and the organization’s international communications speaker, entered the burnt nursery school and kindergarten at Kibbutz Be’eri where he found, Penzel writes, “a small child with a knife lodged through his skull. On the floor was a hammer whose handle was completely burned, and on the hammer were pieces of the toddler’s skull.”

The account “undermined my faith in humanity,” Penzel writes.

He said that while writing the book, he found it hard to spend time with his two nephews and two nieces.

“I truly did imagine those sights on my family members,” Penzel said.

Penzel shares another testimony, of ZAKA volunteer Natan Kenig, who found a man who had been nailed with a nail gun to a door frame inside a house.

“Even though I already understood precisely what happened,” Penzel writes, “that the guy was actually crucified, I probably wasn’t able to comprehend how such a thing could be done to a human being standing in front of you.”

After yet another devastating testimony, he notes, “Here we are, striving to be optimistic even though we can’t find anything to console ourselves with, seeking to find the good in the bad, the angel in the devil, the humanity in the cruelty.”

At the National Center of Forensic Medicine, Penzel met with Kugel who described his work identifying the mutilated bodies.

Penzel quotes Kugel saying that in one case, the center received “a black lump of coal.”

“Only after we took an X-ray could we understand that the same lump of coal was actually two different people,” Kugel told Penzel. “An older woman and a young woman who were hugging.”

Penzel writes how he stared at that black lump, adding that there are “sights from which there are no turning back.”

He admits he asked questions like “a scared little child who doesn’t understand what he sees in front of him.”

Penzel said that “many people” have told him the book is too hard to read.

“I understand,” he said. “I understand and still I think, ‘How can we say it’s too difficult for us? Just imagine what those people went through.'”

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.