JERUSALEM — Doron Steinbrecher vowed that she would never wear pink again when she made her first public comments in a video after being freed from more than 15 months in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip.

A year ago, she had appeared in a hostage video made by her captors wearing a pale rose-colored sweatshirt. When the Palestinian militant group Hamas released her last month, she was dressed in a bright magenta track suit and looked pale.

Sitting in front of a camera again took her back to the difficult moments when her captors filmed her in Gaza, Steinbrecher, 31, said in the video, looking composed and smiling at times.

“This time, I’m sitting comfortably on a couch with my family watching me in a warm and pleasant place,” she said.

Trying to convey that she had not been broken, she said it was important for her to show everyone that “I’m OK.”

As families and sympathizers at home and abroad doggedly campaigned for the release of the Israeli hostages, most people knew them only as faces staring out from posters. Now, with 16 Israelis released since Jan. 19 under the ceasefire deal with Hamas, those haunting faces are coming to life in video clips, social media posts and statements from relatives that provide glimpses of the joy and relief of freedom as well as hints of the torment they have endured.

The brief messages they have sent out have mostly been expressions of gratitude to all those who worked for their release and pleas not to give up until the last hostage is freed.

The urgency of that message became even clearer Saturday, when many Israelis were shocked to see the emaciated condition of the latest three hostages who were released: Eli Sharabi, 52; Or Levy, 34; and Ohad Ben-Ami, 56.

Some relatives have said that the hostages released earlier were often deprived of food, suffered severe loss of weight and muscle mass, and rarely saw sunlight. Family members said some of the hostages had at least occasional access to radio or television and heard or saw their relatives campaigning for their release, which helped them survive.

Col. Avi Benov, a doctor and deputy chief of the Israeli military’s medical corps, told reporters that the first seven women recently released were all suffering from “mild starvation,” while some still had shrapnel in their bodies from injuries they sustained on Oct. 7, 2023, the day Hamas led an attack from Gaza on southern Israel. The Israelis and other hostages are being exchanged for about 1,500 Palestinian prisoners.

Some of the Israeli hostages had been forced to appear in videos filmed by their captors in Gaza — a practice that rights groups have denounced as inhumane treatment that could amount to a war crime. Israeli officials have called these a form of psychological warfare.

A few months ago, Hamas’ military wing issued a statement claiming that a hostage had been killed and released blurry images apparently showing a body wrapped in a shroud. One close-up shot showed a tattoo identical to one belonging to Daniella Gilboa, one of a number of female lookout soldiers captured from a small military base near the Gaza border.

But Gilboa, 20, was freed Jan. 25. Days later, she was singing at a party marking the discharge of the army lookouts from Beilinson Hospital near Tel Aviv.

She reflected on her ordeal in a lengthy Instagram post on Feb. 2. She said her faith and observance of Jewish rituals had gotten her through.

“Dad, I came back alive!” another freed hostage, Romi Gonen, 24, shouted into a cellphone after being reunited with her mother on Jan. 19.

Experts say that the long captivity caused physical and psychological harm, and that full rehabilitation will take time.

“We are walking a very slow path,” said Noa Eliakim-Raz, the head of the returnees’ ward at Beilinson Hospital.