Even before October 7, Miriam Schler knew how to handle survivors.

As the executive director of the Tel Aviv Sexual Assault Crisis Center, she works with assault survivors daily. For her, one of the most important things the crisis center can do for survivors is validate their experience and offer support in any number of ways: one-on-one counseling (alone or with someone to comfort them), ongoing calls (to talk or simply to cry), and even guidance through the criminal process (pressing charges, filing complaints, physical accompaniment to the police).

But perhaps even more than validation and support, what Miriam hopes to give survivors is control of their situation: “When people call us, one of the main things that we try to do is give them back the power and give them back control over the situation, which was completely lost at the time of the assault.”

Validation, support, and autonomy. Three critical pieces of Miriam’s work — and three things that the world largely denied the survivors of October 7.

"We have to tell this story. The survivors are very few."

Orit Sulitzeanu saw this denial happening in real time too. As the CEO of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, funded in part by UJA, she oversees a coalition of all nine rape crisis centers in the country, including the one in Tel Aviv that Miriam directs.

With the influx of survivors from October 7 came an ever-growing pile of firsthand accounts, and not just from survivors: therapists, doctors, and first responders all reported the horrors they’d witnessed.

Orit knew their organization had to document all of it  —  but, of course, collecting all this information for a report wasn’t easy. “My researcher used to call me, and she told me, ‘I’m writing and I’m crying, I’m writing and I’m crying.’”

Still, their work, supported by UJA — and the work of all the rape crisis centers since October 7 — persists. “We have a mission to the world,” Orit says. “We have to tell this story. The survivors are very few. Most of the victims are no longer with us who will tell this story, who will talk about what has happened. We have this mission to do so.”