When Hamas seized her son Hersh at the Nova music festival near the Gaza border on October 7, Rachel Goldberg-Polin became one of the most visible faces of Israel’s hostage crisis. An American Israeli who had moved to Jerusalem 18 years earlier with her husband, Jon, and their three children, Rachel spent the months after Hersh’s capture campaigning tirelessly for his return. She and Jon met with world leaders, spoke to the pope and gave interviews around the world, and Rachel wore a strip of tape marked with the number of days since October 7 as a constant public reminder of their fight.
Rachel recalls Hersh’s last messages during the attack: two short texts, “I love you” and “I’m sorry.” Those brief words, she says, changed everything. For nearly a year there were signs that rescue might still be possible — including a video that showed Hersh alive but badly wounded, his left forearm mangled. Families held vigils, shouted names toward Gaza and clung to any hope that their loved ones could be saved. On what later proved to be the day he was killed, Rachel joined other families in a call for the captives’ release.
On the 328th day of his captivity, Israeli forces recovered Hersh’s body in an underground tunnel in Rafah. He had been executed; reports said he was shot multiple times at close range. The return of his body prompted a massive funeral procession in Israel and brought an end to the long months of fighting to keep him alive. Rachel has said that, after learning of his execution, she realized that the months when he was living in captivity had been “the good part” because he was alive.
A crucial comfort came from a released hostage, Or Levy, who spent days with Hersh and later told Rachel that Hersh had laughed and smiled despite his wounds. Or said Hersh repeatedly used a line from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning — “He who has a why can bear any how” — and shared it with others in the tunnel. Or also told Rachel that Hersh had heard her voice on the news and knew she was working for him; that knowledge brought Rachel some solace.
Throughout the ordeal, Rachel and Jon advocated not only for Hersh but for all the hostages. Rachel’s public appearances were part of a campaign to keep international attention on the captives and to press for diplomatic and military efforts on their behalf. She later reflected on that time in a book, When We See You Again, and in public remarks about the grieving that followed Hersh’s death and what she has learned about living with loss.
Rachel has described grief as chronic — “ever present, constant, gnawing, circular, not linear.” Over time her relationship to that grief shifted: what she once feared became, she says, “a precious badge of love,” a sign that love endures after death. She and Jon kept Hersh’s room as he had left it and preserved the wall of taped day-counts they had worn; when the last returned body arrived this January, they removed those tapes, burying that ritual as part of their mourning.
She has also spoken candidly about the bitter sense of failure many surviving parents carry: despite doing all they could, she and Jon could not secure the outcome they fought for. Even so, they continue to press for the remaining hostages and to speak for those who cannot. Accounts from Rachel and from freed prisoners like Or Levy have helped reveal both the brutality of the October 7 attacks and the resilience of those who endured captivity.
Hersh is remembered by family and friends as easygoing and bright, a son his parents treasured. Those who spent time with him in captivity say he kept smiling and tried to comfort others even as he coped with severe injuries. For Rachel, the daily ache remains, but so does the memory of Hersh’s humor, his mantra and the ways he sustained people around him — details she says help sustain her now.