Retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Robert Ezenauer had never been to Israel and it was on his bucket list. So, when the 70-year-old pediatric ophthalmologist heard through a friend that Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba was looking for an ophthalmologist to fill in for two weeks to replace doctors who had been called up for reserve duty, he volunteered.
“I just thought, it’s a way I can support Israel and help out kids,” Ezenauer told The Times of Israel. He had been a battalion surgeon for the US Special Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and also operated on children during the wars in both countries. “Helping kids is what I like to do,” he said.
Since the beginning of the war, approximately 400 doctors and 30 health professionals from the US and other countries have arrived in Israel to assist in treating the large number of injured or to fill in for Israeli medical staff who are called to military duty.
The Health Ministry has received “thousands of inquiries” about volunteering over the past nine months, a spokesperson said. A website was launched shortly after the war began for medical professionals; approximately 7,000 doctors have registered to volunteer, and will be contacted if needed.
Ezenauer said “they worked me hard” at the hospital, where he guided residents in surgeries including strabismus, or what is commonly known as cross-eye surgery, when the eyes do not properly align with each other.
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U.S. Brigadier General, retired, Dr. Robert Ezenauer (Courtesy)
“We performed many operations in a short time,” said Dr. Mohamed Wattad, a resident at Soroka. “He taught us new surgical techniques.”
Ezenauer said that when he was in the clinic, all of a sudden he’d hear helicopters flying in from Gaza.
“That’s exactly what I was used to in combat,” Ezenauer said. “You hear the helicopters going, and you’re wondering how or if you’re going to get to sleep that night.” He said that for him, “a military guy, it was a powerful experience.”
Dr. Mark Kissin
Since the start of war, 26 doctors — mostly from the US, but also from Canada, Hungary, and France — have volunteered at Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya. Three have come back for a second round.
One of them, Dr. Mark Kissin, a vascular surgeon in New York, came to volunteer in October and then again in June. Born in Russia, he moved with his family to Israel at age 8, then to the US when he was 16. He returned to Israel to join the IDF for three years, and then went back to a US medical school.
Dr. Mark Kissin with his daughter, Sasha, volunteer at Galilee Medical Center. (Courtesy)
The day after the war broke out, he started calling different hospitals to volunteer. Through a contact, he found a vascular surgeon at Galilee Medical Center.
“After not being here for 34 years, as soon as I arrived, I went into Israeli mode,” Kissin said. “My friend said my English got bad, and I was talking fluent Hebrew.”
Joining him on both trips was New York thoracic surgeon Dr. David Zeltsman. They spent two weeks volunteering at the hospital in October and then returned to volunteer in June. This time Kissin’s daughter, Sasha, a sophomore at UCLA-Davis, also volunteered at the hospital.
What impressed Kissin was how people of different religions worked together at the hospital in what was “a very difficult situation.” Since October, all of the hospital’s departments are in protected rooms, most underground.
“The hospital is in an emergency mode,” he said. “It’s obviously inconvenient for patients and no privacy. But it seemed like all the patients were very respectful of each other.”
The medical staff told him that it “helped them that we were there for moral support and in case there was a mass casualty event.” While they thanked him, he said he wanted to return the thanks.
“This was the most meaningful thing I’ve done in my professional life,” he said.
Dr. Samuel Esterson
Dr. Samuel Esterson came two times to volunteer at the Kaylie Rehabilitation Medical Center at ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran, a rehabilitation village adjacent to Ofakim.
Physical therapist Dr. Samuel Esterson instructs an injured soldier with extensive lower body shrapnel wounds in dynamic leg strength exercises at Kaylie Rehabilitation Medical Center at ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran (Courtesy)
So far, the center has treated 50 soldiers and civilians who were wounded in the war.
Esterson, a physical therapist, took the place of a physical therapist who had been called up to duty.
Two years ago, when Esterson was 65, he decided to take the physical therapy licensing exam in Israel. He studied for “about 300 hours, no joke,” and passed, so when he came to volunteer at the facility, he didn’t need a temporary Israeli license and “could just walk right in.”
On the second trip, he came with his wife, Malka, a registered nurse who doesn’t have an Israeli license, but helped the nursing staff.
Esterson said the soldiers were “heroes.”
They had “half of their shoulders blown off by RPGs,” he said. They had peripheral nerve injuries, fractures, and bone injuries. Yet “they support each other.”
Esterson also treated middle-aged and elderly people who had run to bomb shelters and fell and broke their shoulders or hips.
At the clinic, when the older people saw the soldiers walking in, he said,”They started rooting them on. It’s that spirit that’s there, which is so amazing.”
Dr. Aviva Wolff
Dr. Aviva Wolff works with performing artists and individuals with musculoskeletal injuries in New York. She is a consultant at the Juilliard School. She also does hand and wrist biomechanics research at the Leon Root, MD Motion Analysis Laboratory at Hospital for Special Surgery.
When Wolff heard there was a dire need for hand therapists and specialists after the war, she decided to come volunteer, also at Kaylie Rehabilitation Medical Center at ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran.
Dr. Aviva Wolff prepares a splint for a patient wounded in the October 7 Hamas attack. (Courtesy)
“We hear about the deaths,” she told The Times of Israel. “We hear about the hostages. We hear about the October 7 victims but we’re not hearing about the hundreds and hundreds of soldiers who are coming out with injuries that are debilitating, that are going to leave them disabled or impaired in some aspects for the rest of their lives. And no one seems to be talking about that.”
During her two weeks in June, Wolff fashioned a splint for man who was injured by a missile in Rahat.
His index finger was misaligned and he was missing two other fingers.
“He couldn’t hold anything in his hand,” Wolff said. “I made a splint to position his index finger so that the doctors could surgically reposition it.”
She said that a large percentage of the employees at the rehab center were evacuated.
“There is staff that hasn’t been able to come back,” Wolff said. “The healthcare providers themselves have their own traumas.”
Back in New York, she reflected on her time as a volunteer.
“I saw a resilience that I’ve never seen anywhere else,” Wolff said.
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