Her son was last seen badly hurt, being loaded into a Hamas truck: One mother details her 6-month agony

JERUSALEM — Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s mantra is the same now as it was six months ago.

“I love you. Stay strong. Survive,” she urges her son, Hersh, one of the more than 130 hostages seized half a year ago by Hamas who have still not been returned from the Gaza Strip.

She repeats those words constantly — whether she is out for a walk in her neighborhood or looking at the poster of her son in their Jerusalem home on Shabbat mornings.

“You can make it through this, and you are going to have a long, beautiful life,” Goldberg-Polin said, 54, recounting the words that she often tells her son in her head.

Goldberg-Polin spoke with NBC News in a modern office space that is tucked into the industrial area of Jerusalem and doubles as the headquarters of the family’s campaign to bring the young man back home. It belongs to a friend and has been transformed into a war room of sorts. The fight: To bring Hersh home safe.Like dozens more Israelis, Goldberg-Polin has not been able to have a real conversation with her child since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7.

Her family’s story offers a glimpse into the plight of the hostages’ families, six agonizing months into the war launched in the wake of that stunning assault. With talks for a cease-fire deal stalled and little to no information about what is happening with the hostages, or even if they are still alive, the families have led protests pushing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to prioritize their loved ones.

‘Pretend to be human’

Goldberg-Polin’s quest began with piecing together what happened to her son, from survivors’ accounts, what the family was told by the authorities and GoPro footage shot by a Hamas militant.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, was taken hostage by Hamas at the Supernova music festival in the early morning hours of Oct. 7.

Trying to run away with his friend Aner Shapira, the two hid in a nearby roadside bomb shelter with 27 other people. But the militants threw hand grenades and sprayed gunfire into the bunker, killing many and injuring others, including Hersh. Survivors and footage from the Hamas GoPro camera that was shared with the family revealed that Hersh had half of his left arm blown off before he was loaded into a truck and taken to Gaza.

His last text messages to his parents after the attack started and before he was taken hostage were: “I love you” and “I’m sorry.”

Goldberg-Polin and her husband, Jonathan Polin, are operating on the assumption that their son is alive and that he may have even received medical help in Gaza. But six months into his captivity, they are bearing the trauma of uncertainty about his fate. “We have to pretend to be normal if we want to function,” Goldberg-Polin said. “First thing in the morning, I always say to myself — ‘And now pretend to be human.’ And I get out of bed and I put on this costume of being a person… It’s kind of like someone’s holding a branding iron on your back and you can’t let anybody know.”

Goldberg-Polin was wearing that costume in her interview last month, though the steely calm written across her face is betrayed by a small piece of masking tape emblazoned across her heart.

The sticker on her gray shirt bears the number of days her son has been held in Gaza — “163” when she spoke with NBC News, though it has now been 181.

It’s a conversation starter, Goldberg-Polin said, but also a reminder about the unbearable wait that families like hers have to endure. “It makes people stop and it makes people really ask and question and push themselves to come up with — how are we allowing this to continue to happen?”

Such trauma “knocks you completely out of your world” like a metaphorical truck that hits you from behind, she said, while healing can come from finding a way to adapt to this new reality.

But Goldberg-Polin is still stuck in limbo.

“The problem that all the hostage families are going through is that the truck is still on us,” she said.

Hamas released more than 100 hostages as part of a cease-fire deal in November, but Goldberg-Polin said that they have had no news on her son’s well-being or even proof of life since Oct. 7 besides hearing that he would not be part of that earlier exchange. Truce talks that have taken place since then have not resulted in any new movement on the hostages. Hamas has frequently claimed that some of them have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, and three hostages were mistakenly killed by Israeli forces in December, adding to the agony for the families back home.

Goldberg-Polin has taken her advocacy for her son and other hostages to the United Nations and around the world. She has met Pope Francis, tech mogul Elon Musk and Israeli President Isaac Herzog, and has also given speeches, attended events and fought to keep the hostages at the top of the international agenda.

But as the civilian death toll in the Gaza Strip grows, Goldberg-Polin said that she fears the hostage issue has become conflated with what is happening in the enclave right now.

After more than 1,200 people were killed by Hamas militants in the Oct. 7 attack, Israel launched a military offensive in Gaza vowing to wipe out Hamas and rescue the hostages.

Six months later, more than 33,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the local Health Ministry, with thousands more feared trapped under the rubble and presumed dead. The assault has precipitated a humanitarian catastrophe and warnings of imminent famine, driving mounting international outrage and accusation of genocide.

Goldberg-Polin sees it as innocent people paying the price on both sides, and she doesn’t champion the suffering of the other.“I’m happy that I’m upset when I see that the other side is also in pain, that I’m not celebrating their pain because that would mean that I’m not human anymore,” she said.

She said she hopes that there is a mother like her on the other side who may be trying to help Hersh, she said.

Goldberg-Polin read out a poem she wrote, called “One Tiny Seed,” at the U.N. a few months ago. The poem is about hoping to share tea with mothers in Gaza one day and watching their children live out their lives in peace.

“Our sea of tears, they all taste the same,” her poem reads.

Goldberg-Polin is convinced that Netanyahu’s government should compromise in order to stop the suffering on both sides. Getting Hersh and other hostages out will come at a high price for Israel no matter what happens, she added.

“But I actually think that’s something that we should be proud of, and it’s something that we should embrace, that we value life and that it’s who we are,” she said.

The price of not bringing the hostages home would be so much higher, Goldberg-Polin said, because then Israel won’t be able to recognize itself.

“I think that this truck that’s been on us, it’s on our chest, but it’s on parts of the rest of the country as well — maybe a toe, maybe a finger, maybe an ear lobe, but it’s on all of us,” she added. “And we are not going to be able to move on from the trauma of Oct. 7 until all these people are home.”

Shira Pinson reported from Jerusalem, Matthew Kwiecinski from Chicago and Yuliya Talmazan from London.