Mother of slain hostage Hersh finds meaning in grief as 'badge of love'

Rachel Goldberg-Polin was sitting at home when the sirens began on the morning of October 7, 2023. Two messages arrived on her phone from her son Hersh, who was at the Nova Music Festival near Gaza's border. "I love you," the first one said. "I'm sorry," came the second. Everything she had known until that moment—her entire life up to that second—was finished.

Hersh was twenty-three, wounded by grenade shrapnel in a bomb shelter packed with more than two dozen people. Four young men, all injured, were dragged outside and forced onto a pickup truck headed into Gaza. One of them was Hersh. His left arm was shattered, bone protruding through the skin. Rachel would not learn the full extent of his injuries until four days later, when a journalist showed her video footage recovered from a Hamas fighter's phone—footage of her son being taken alive. It was terrible and it was a mercy. At least she knew he had been kidnapped. At least he was breathing.

For 328 days, Rachel became the face of the hostage crisis. She wore tape on her body each day, marking the number of hours her son and 250 others remained captive. She met the pope. She spoke to world leaders. She gave hundreds of interviews. Every day she repeated the same words to herself and to anyone who would listen: "I love you. Stay strong. Survive." The mantra was as much a command to herself as it was a prayer for her son. There were moments when the weight of it all would collapse her, and she would lean into her husband Jon and ask, "How much longer? How much longer?" On the 201st day, Hamas released a propaganda video showing Hersh. She could see the stump where his arm had been. It was another shock, another reason to keep going.

On day 328, Rachel and Jon stood with other hostage families, screaming their children's names toward Gaza through a microphone. She did not know that her son was being murdered in a tunnel in Rafah at that very moment. He was shot six times at close range. When his body was found weeks later, thousands lined the streets for his funeral.

But something unexpected happened in February 2025. A hostage named Or Levy was released by Hamas. Or had spent three days with Hersh in captivity. He told Rachel and Jon something that would reshape their understanding of their son's final year. Despite losing his arm, despite the starvation and abuse, Hersh had laughed. He had smiled the entire time. He had repeated a mantra to the other prisoners: "He who has a why can bear any how." The phrase came from Viktor Frankl's concentration camp memoir, "Man's Search For Meaning." It became the survival creed for everyone in that tunnel.

When Or asked Hersh what his "why" was—what kept him going—Hersh pointed to his mother. He had heard her voice on the news. He knew she was fighting for him. Rachel learned that her son had told Or about her meeting with the U.S. secretary of state. "We are nobodies," she said later. "We are absolute nobodies." But they had tried so hard, and he had known.

Now Rachel is trying to find her own "why." She has written a book called "When We See You Again," published in April 2026. She has reframed what grief means to her. It is not failure, though she still carries that feeling. It is not something to dread or resist. Grief, she has come to understand, is a badge of love—the price of having loved someone so completely that their absence becomes a permanent weight you carry. The pain is chronic, ever present, constant, gnawing, circular, not linear. It may change shape, but it will not disappear. And that, she has learned, is not a tragedy. It is proof that the love was real.