Rachel Goldberg-Polin on grief after Hamas abducted, killed her son | 60 Minutes
In a Nutshell
Rachel Goldberg-Polin recounts the abduction of her son Hersh during the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack at the Nova Music Festival, where he lost his arm but survived initial captivity, enduring 328 days as a hostage before being executed in a Gaza tunnel. She and her husband tirelessly advocated for hostages, wearing daily count tapes and meeting world leaders, learning from released captive Orur Levy that Hersh's mantra—"He who has a why can bear any how"—sustained them both, with Hersh's "why" being his parents' fight. Now grappling with chronic grief as a "precious badge of love," Rachel authored *When We See You Again* and reflects that while all hostages' bodies returned, 100% effort wasn't enough to save her son alive.
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Since Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel 2.5 years ago and the war in Gaza began, far too many mothers, Palestinian and Israeli, have lost children. Rachel Goldberg-Polin is an American-Israeli who moved to Jerusalem 18 years ago with her husband Jon and their three children. Her only son, Hersh, was badly wounded and taken hostage by Hamas on October 7th. Rachel and Jon worked tirelessly to bring Hersh and the other hostages home. But on the 328th day of his captivity, Hersh was executed in a tunnel in Gaza. Now Rachel is trying to figure out how to live after her child has died.
To know that your child is being tortured, tormented, starved, abused, is maimed. And that's an excruciating form of suffering. And then what's so fascinating to me is that when they came to tell us that Hersh had been executed, then I realized that those 330 days had been the good part because he was alive. And now I'm in this place and this is the rest of my life. How do I walk through this place without a piece of me here?
Have you figured that out yet?
I'm trying to re-understand what it means to be in this world. There are millions of us right now who have buried children. There's nothing unique about me, but it creates light for me to try to give words to the pain.
What was Hersh like? Easy.
Easy. The universe really knew what it was doing when it said Rachel's going to have one son, so this is the one for her. I was really blessed.
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