Shani Louk’s father reveals he received an envelope containing his daughter’s charred jewelry, days after IDF forces found her remains among other dead Israeli hostages during the Gaza attack

Shani Louk’s family knew for sure their daughter had died in Gaza when Israeli police handed them an envelope containing charred jewelry taken from her remains, it has been revealed.

The brutal kidnapping of the 22-year-old German-Israeli tattoo artist from the Nova music festival by Hamas terrorists on October 7 became one of the enduring symbols of the atrocities.

Images of her half-naked body parading through the streets of Gaza on the back of a pickup truck were ubiquitous in the weeks following Hamas’s attacks on Israel, but her father Nissim Louk hoped she had survived the ordeal.

For months, Nissim and the family tried to get information out of Gaza, using all their contacts to find a man in the Palestinian enclave to search for Shani and provide details of her whereabouts and condition.

But their hopes were dashed when IDF soldiers discovered human remains they believed to be Shani’s during a nighttime raid on a Gaza site two weeks ago.

Nissim said he knew for sure that Shani was lost a few days later when an Israeli police officer delivered the envelope containing his daughter’s necklace, earrings, nose and lip piercings, along with documents confirming her death.

Nissim told The Telegraph how he immediately recognized Shani’s dreadlocks and tattoos from the images of her on the back of a Hamas pickup.

“We didn’t see any blood on that white truck, so we thought, maybe everything is OK,” he said.

But with Hamas providing no confirmation of his daughter’s condition, Nissim turned to desperate measures.

By contacting relatives in Germany who could get in touch with Palestinian acquaintances, Nissim managed to get in touch with an elderly Gazan who agreed to work for the family and help dig for information on Shani’s whereabouts.

The man provided few details but claimed to have seen WhatsApp messages between Gaza medics that allegedly described their care for a “German girl” – a description that Nissim believed likely referred to his daughter.

Earlier this month, Nissim said the family had “hoped, planned and prayed” for Shani’s safety and were “looking for clues to prove she was alive.”

But their prayers went unanswered.

Nissim recounted how IDF officers came to the house and explained how troops conducting a raid in Gaza had come across human remains.

The officer said skull fragments found at the scene appeared to match Shani’s DNA, indicating she had suffered fatal injuries.

Inside, along with some paperwork, was a blackened necklace, a pair of gold earrings and stud earrings from Shani’s nose and lips.

Shani’s body was found in the woods near their home on May 19 in a moving ceremony attended by dozens of mourners.

IDF officials revealed that Shani’s remains were found next to the bodies of two other hostages: Itzhak Gelerenter, 57, and Amit Buskila, 28.

All three attended the Oct. 7 Supernova Festival at Kibbutz Re’im, one of the first locations attacked by Hamas during its deadly incursion into Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the deaths of the three revelers “heartbreaking” and added: “We will return all our hostages, both living and dead.”

Late last week, IDF forces working with members of Israel’s Shin Bet security force launched a similar attack and recovered the remains of three more hostages.

Hanan Yablonka, Michel Nisenbaum and Oryon Hernandez-Radoux were kidnapped on October 7 from the Supernova music festival and Mefalsim intersection, just a mile from the Gaza border, and then killed by Hamas, Israeli officials said.

Hernandez-Radoux, 30, was Shani’s boyfriend. Both had shared photos together on social media in the days and weeks leading up to their abduction.

Shani was seen during the Nova Festival near Kibbutz Re’im, hours before Hamas gunmen flooded the border on October 7, 2023.

Earlier this month, Nissim spoke out in defense of the award given to an AP photographer who captured the chilling moment his 22-year-old daughter’s half-naked body was paraded through Gaza by Hamas.

His comments come after friends said they were shocked the photo had won the prestigious award and were in tears.

The decision to award AP photographer Ali Mahmud the Reynolds Journalism Institute’s oldest photojournalism gong after he finished first in “Team Picture Story of the Year” sparked outrage.

The photo shows five armed Hamas members in a pickup truck, one of whom rests his feet on Louk’s limp body.

Further footage shows the terrorists parading her body in Gaza amid cheering crowds, with someone spitting on her remains.

But Nissim said: ‘It’s good that the photo won the prize.’

“This is one of the most important photos of the last fifty years,” he told Ynet.

He expressed his firm belief that his daughter’s photo will leave a mark on human history. He sees the photo as a symbol of the current era and will hopefully serve as documentation for generations to come.

“These are some of the photographs that shape human memory: the Jew raising his hands, the paratroopers at the Western Wall, photographs that symbolize an era,” he continued.

‘This documentation of Shani and Noa Argamani on the motorcycle symbolizes this era. I think using it to inform the future is a good thing.”

‘If I start crying, what will happen? This is history. In 100 years they will look and know what happened here. I travel around the world and everyone knows who Shani is,” he told Ynet.

But Shani’s mother Ricarda said she was shocked by the photo and said it forced her and her family to relive the trauma of losing their loved one.