When Hamas abducted her son Hersh from 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 moved to Jerusalem 18 years earlier with her husband Jon and their three children, Rachel and Jon spent the months after Hersh’s capture working tirelessly to bring him and the other hostages home. They spoke to world leaders, the pope and reporters around the globe, and Rachel carried a visible reminder of their fight: a strip of tape on which she wrote the number of days since October 7 and wore it daily, shouting for their release whenever she could.
Rachel remembers the last messages she got from Hersh during the attack: two short texts, “I love you” and “I’m sorry.” Those moments, she says, changed everything. For nearly a year, evidence — including a video showing Hersh alive but badly wounded with a mangled left forearm — offered hope that he might be saved. Hostage families held vigils and screamed names toward Gaza; on what turned out to be the day he was killed, Rachel joined other families in one such call.
On the 328th day of his captivity, Israeli forces later discovered Hersh’s body in an underground tunnel in Rafah. He had been executed; reports said he was shot multiple times at close range. The discovery and return of his body led to a massive funeral procession in Israel. For Rachel and Jon, the long months of fighting for his life had ended in the worst possible way. Rachel has said that, after learning of his execution, she realized the living months of captivity were “the good part” because he was alive.
A significant moment of information and comfort came when a released hostage, Or Levy, described spending days with Hersh in captivity. Or said Hersh laughed and smiled despite his injuries and hardship. 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 their ordeal, Rachel and Jon advocated for all the hostages. Rachel’s public appearances — in media and before officials — were part of a campaign to keep attention on the captives and press for diplomatic and military efforts to bring them home. She later wrote a book, When We See You Again, reflecting on that period, 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 understanding of grief shifted. What she once feared has become, she says, “a precious badge of love” — a sign that love continues even after death. She and Jon kept Hersh’s room as he left it and maintained the wall of taped day-counts they had worn; when the last returned body came back this January, they took those tapes down, burying the ritual as one element of a process of mourning.
Rachel has also acknowledged the bitter sense of failure so many surviving parents carry; despite doing all they could, she and Jon could not win the outcome they had fought for. Yet they continue to press for the remaining hostages and to speak for those who cannot. Her account, and the accounts of other freed prisoners such as Or Levy, helped illuminate both the brutality of the October 7 attacks and the endurance of those who survived and those who were held captive.
Hersh is remembered by those who knew him as easygoing and bright, a son his parents treasured. Those who spent time with him in captivity say he kept smiling and attempting to give comfort to others even as he bore the consequences of severe wounds. For Rachel, the day-to-day pain endures, but so does the memory of Hersh’s humor, his mantra and the ways he sustained others — details she says help sustain her now.