How Do the Families of the Hamas Hostages Endure the Agony?

You may think you know stories like this one, but it’s important not to become numb to their evil and horror. Hersh Goldberg-Polin was attending the Nova music festival on October 7 when the Hamas terrorists descended. He and three others rushed to their car and tried to escape by heading north. But the terrorists were shooting drivers on the road, so Hersh and his friends instead sought refuge in a nearby bomb shelter.

More than 25 young people were crammed into a 5-by-8-foot enclosure. The Hamas fighters, filming themselves with GoPro cameras, began lobbing hand grenades into the shelter. Seven times, Hersh’s friend Aner picked up a grenade and threw it back out before it detonated. The eighth grenade exploded while he was still holding it, killing him.

The terrorists continued to spray the shelter with grenades as well as gunfire. When the attack was over, 18 concertgoers in the shelter were dead, seven were alive but hidden under the pile of bodies, and Hersh and three others were slumped against a wall, exposed.

Hersh was taken at gunpoint to a pickup truck and in one video can be seen hoisting himself onto the truck bed. His left arm had been blown off at the elbow, leaving a stump with a bone protruding from it.

Later that day, his parents learned what had happened. Over the ensuing seven months, Jon and Rachel Goldberg-Polin have become the most visible faces of the hostage families, relentlessly advocating for the release of all the hostages. If you’ve followed this story at all, you’ve probably seen one of their interviews, or their visits to Congress or the United Nations.

The political and social issues that surround all of this are complex, but as I watched the Goldberg-Polins’ interviews, the questions that preoccupied me were simple: How do two people endure this much agony and still manage to get out of bed in the morning? How are they able to keep up this remorseless schedule when their child has had his forearm blown off and now sits imprisoned by terrorists underground somewhere in a war zone?

[Graeme Wood: A close read of Hamas’s hostage-taking manual]

The resource guides for parents whose children have been abducted in various circumstances are rich with compassion and advice on how to practice self-care: Make sure you eat properly, find time for physical exercise, give yourself some personal space, focus on your emotional well-being, keep a journal. In this paradigm, the parents are the victims, passively trying to cope.

But Hersh’s parents have embraced an entirely different paradigm: They have found that the best way they can endure trauma is through direct action. They will travel anywhere, lobby anyone, talk to anyone who might possibly be able to help them liberate their son. The hostages don’t get a day off, the Goldberg-Polins told me recently when I interviewed them via Zoom, so they don’t get a day off. They have found in the horror an all-consuming sense of purpose, a determination that is striking to behold.

“I have never in my life, nor has Rachel, nor have most people, been on a mission that is so clearly focused on literally life-or-death matters,” Jon said. “And it’s a good thing that most of us don’t have this experience.” He adds that this mission is binary: Their son’s safe return is success; anything else is failure. For them, there is no such thing as a partial victory.

They’ve been at this now for more than half a year. “We both struggle with the challenge of self-care,” Jon said. “My head says to me, You’ll be more successful on the mission if you eat well, if you get your sleep. And I know that to be true, but it’s so hard to do. I tried four or five times over the last 222 days to get some exercise, but when I’m in the middle of it, I think, No, I’ve got to answer three emails and make two phone calls.”

“The only time I feel okay is when I’m working to help save Hersh or the other hostages,” Rachel said. “I’m not feeling good, but I’m feeling like I’m doing what it is that I’m supposed to be doing.”

The Goldberg-Polins have not watched TV or listened to music since October 7. Rachel hasn’t put on makeup or worn her hair down, or done the New York Times crossword puzzle, which she used to do with Hersh. “There can be no normalcy,” she says. “It is not acceptable. And I don’t want to feel good. Feeling good does not feel good. The only time I feel okay is when I feel bad.”

Every day begins with a decision—the decision to get out of bed and run to the ends of the Earth to help the hostages. Each day, the Goldberg-Polins write the number corresponding to the length of Hersh’s captivity on a piece of masking tape and put it on their shirts, over their heart. I spoke with them on day 222. They have a team working with them on their mission to help them free Hersh, but they have found that they have little time for those who just want to offer comfort. A friend asked Rachel if she could come over and give her a hug. “That’s the absolute worst thing you can ask me,” she told me. “I had to say, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do that, because it’s not comfortable for me.’ The only time I’m comfortable is when I’m working.”

Rachel describes experiencing moments of extreme pain, both emotional and physical. Twice, she says, she went to gatherings with large numbers of family members of the hostages and suddenly it was like she was feeling all of their pain at once. “It’s like someone has shot me in the lower back, and I fall to the ground and I’m in agony.”

“I feel like I’m inhaling the trauma of hundreds of people, and my body can’t bear it,” she told me. “It is an absolute physical reality even though I know it’s through a spiritual and emotional portal that it is entering me.”

Social encounters can be hard. Jon says he sees people’s eyes go wide when they see him and his wife, or they start to cry. “I understand it,” Rachel said. “I understand that we are everyone’s worst nightmare and so we are very scary. It’s like we have leprosy. I know that my presence makes people uncomfortable, and that’s a really challenging place to be.”

The worst is when people come up and ask how they are doing. “It feels like I have a meat cleaver sticking out of my chest,” Rachel said. “Please don’t ask me how I am. It feels so inappropriate—and yet I know that it is without malice, so I need to be more compassionate.” Jon consulted a rabbi who reminded him that they are enduring an experience so rare that nobody knows what to do or say. Much of what people tell them is inappropriate, but they don’t mean harm.

[Listen: ‘Be absolutely quiet. Not a word.’]

Nonetheless, the Goldberg-Polins have been fortified by the thousands of people who have contacted them. “It’s amazing, the strengthening power of hearing from strangers every day who reach out from every country of the world, Rachel said. “They often mention their religion—‘I’m Catholic’ or ‘I’m Hindu.’ To get that from people every day is both strengthening and it’s a responsibility.”

A childhood friend whom Rachel had not seen in 40 years and who now has breast cancer reached out. She reminded Rachel that in the Book of Job, things begin to turn around for Job when he begins to pray for others, rather than just agonizing about his own fate. So she asked Rachel to pray for her in her cancer battle, and they have become prayer partners. Being involved in a mutual relationship in which succor is exchanged has turned out to be easier than just being on the receiving end of someone else’s pity. This is an elemental reminder of one of the crucial laws of effective compassion: Don’t do things for people; do things with people.

On day 201, Hamas released a video showing that Hersh is still alive. He looked pale and worn, his left arm ending in a nub in the middle of the forearm. In the video, which was obviously directed by Hamas, he condemned the Netanyahu government, and expressed love for his parents and sisters. Jon and Rachel were overwhelmed to see him for the first time in more than 200 days. They listened to his voice, not the words he was compelled to utter, and they heard his toughness and conviction. As parents, they also noticed things that might have been invisible to the rest of us—for instance, the possibility that he might be under the influence of mind-altering drugs.

“People have a hard time swallowing it when we say we feel blessed,” Rachel said. “We say to each other in bed at night, ‘It’s shocking how you can have such trauma and unity at the same time.’ We have had so much benevolence and grace showered on us. It is truly grace. This undeserved generosity of spirit, of kindness and thoughtfulness, gives us a lot of strength.”

Hersh is a big soccer fan, and his favorite Israeli team has a sister team in Bremen, Germany. Hersh had visited fans in Bremen three or four times in the six months before he was kidnapped. During games now, fans display giant signs supporting Hersh, and Rachel recorded a video expressing her gratitude to them..

Hersh was named after his great-uncle Herschel, who was killed in the Holocaust. “It gives me hope to think that 80 years from now, Israeli and Palestinian children will be at a soccer stadium together enjoying a game,” Rachel said. “Right now, that’s unthinkable—but in 1943, the idea that Germans would be honoring a Jewish hostage would also have been unthinkable.”

When I logged on to Zoom to talk to Jon and Rachel, I had expected to feel pity and compassion. And, yes, those emotions were there. But I was also struck by the strength and determination that emanate from them. The way the Goldberg-Polins have handled their situation reminds me that while we don’t always get to control what happens, we do get to control our response. They demonstrate that it’s possible to retain an inner strength and a firm rebuttal to dark forces, even in the face of life’s worst.