Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the grieving mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was taken hostage Oct. 7, 2023 and murdered nearly a year later, has kept her son's room as he left it, with one exception.
There's a ball of tape; each piece has a number on it. After her son's abduction, Rachel started wearing a piece of tape; on it, she'd write the number of days since Hersh and the other 250 hostages were taken. At the end of each day, the pieces were placed on a wall in her apartment. Rachel finally took the pieces of tape down earlier this year after the body of the last hostage was returned to Israel in January. It now sits in a ball in Hersh's room.
When Rachel looks at the pieces of tape, she sees "symbols of failure."
"What we were fighting for did happen. We got all of these people home, not as we wanted. We wanted them home, alive, but they had come home," she said.
Rachel said she feels she failed, even though she fought tirelessly with her husband, Jon, for the return of their son and the other hostages.
"Sometimes 100% is not enough," she said.
October 7 attack
Hersh, Rachel and Jon's only son, was at the Nova Music Festival near the border with Gaza when Hamas terrorists attacked, killing 378 people and wounding hundreds more.
Rachel, an American, who moved to Jerusalem with Jon and their three children 18 years ago, turned on her phone that morning when she heard emergency sirens sound. She had two messages from her son. The first said "I love you," the second, "I'm sorry."
He sent the messages from inside a bomb shelter, packed with more than two dozen people, including his best friend, Aner Shapira.
According to survivors, Hamas threw hand grenades into the shelter over and over again. Shapira picked up and threw back at least 10 grenades before he was killed — one of 16 casualties in the shelter.
Some survivors were able to hide under bodies. Others were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists, including Hersh. After Hersh was severely wounded by a grenade, he was taken from the shelter, forced into a pickup truck and driven into Gaza along with three other hostages.
Fighting for answers and her son's return
On Oct. 16, 2023, Rachel and Jon spoke with correspondent Anderson Cooper on CNN. During their live interview, they told Cooper that survivors of the shelter said Hersh had been kidnapped and that his left hand had been blown off.
Cooper realized that days earlier he'd seen a video, recovered from a Hamas terrorist's cellphone, of Hersh. The gruesome video showed Hersh bleeding and being forced into a truck with the bone of his left forearm sticking out. Cooper called the Goldberg-Polins as soon as they were off air and told them about the video he'd seen.
"It made us know that he was taken alive, that he walked on his own two feet," Rachel said.
The family fought tirelessly for the return of the 251 hostages who were taken. Rachel met with the pope and world leaders. She gave hundreds of interviews.
"I was always saying, 'I love you. Stay strong. Survive. I love you. Stay strong. Survive. I love you. Stay strong. Survive.'"
These words were not just a message she hoped her son would feel, but a command to herself.
"Because there were times when I would just get seized with emotional and psychological and physical pain," she said. "And I would keel over onto Jon and I would just say, 'How much longer? How much longer? How much longer?'"
On day 201, Hamas posted a propaganda video of her son.
"And that gave us another bolt of adrenaline. Keep going, keep going, this child needs you," Rachel said.
The day Hersh died
On day 328, Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin joined other hostage families, screaming their loved ones' names into a microphone towards Gaza. Rachel didn't know it at the time, but that was the day her son was murdered by Hamas. Ever since that day, she's wondered if there was a chance her son heard her screams.
"I think there are other ways that you can hear your parents screaming for you, even if you don't hear them," she said.
Her son's body, along with the bodies of several other executed hostages, were found in an underground tunnel in Rafah on Aug. 31, 2024. Hersh had been shot six times at close range.
Learning about the last year of their son's life
Rachel and Jon continued advocating for the remaining hostages after their son's death. However, they longed for more information about the last year of their son's life in captivity. Then, in February 2025, Hamas released Israeli hostage Or Levy, who had spent time in a tunnel with Hersh. When Levy reunited with his family and his 3-year-old son, he learned his wife, Eynav, was killed in the attack. He was also told Hersh had been murdered.
"It broke me. And I told my parents right away, 'I want to meet their parents,'" Levy said.
Levy met with Rachel and Jon five days after his release and told them their son wasn't broken — he laughed, he smiled, and he repeated a mantra: "He who has a why can bear any how." Levy credits that mantra with saving his life.
It's a phrase Hersh got from "Man's Search for Meaning," a 1946 memoir by concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl, who'd adapted a similar saying by Friedrich Nietzsche.
That mantra, "He who has a why can bear any how," became the mantra of everyone in the tunnel.
Levy got the phrase tattooed on his arm shortly after he was freed. His son, who doesn't speak English, asked his father what it meant. Levy answered:" You."
"The only reason why I survived was him," Levy said.
Levy told Rachel she was her son's "why."
"It was this shocking, life-affirming CPR from beyond, to have Hersh, through Or, telling us, 'what's your why going to be, because you can bear this, even this, even losing me, you can do it,'" Rachel said. "Part of what I'm trying so hard to do now is to figure out what is my why."
Levy also told Rachel something else that gave her comfort: Hersh knew his mother was fighting for him. While captive, Levy said Hersh had heard Rachel on the news after she had spoken to the U.S. secretary of state. He'd been able to hear his mother's voice.
"It was like, all the sudden, thank God, first of all, that he heard my voice, and that he knew," Rachel said. "We are nobodies. We are absolute nobodies. I even say, the equivalent of John Doe in the Jewish world, is Rachel Goldberg. But we tried, so hard. And he knew."
Reckoning with grief
Today, Rachel is trying to figure out how to live now that her child has died.
"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," she said. "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?"
In her book "When We See You Again," out this week, Rachel writes that "the pain is chronic, ever-present, constant. Gnawing. Circular, not linear."
Rachel says although the pain of losing her son remains the same, her understanding of grief has evolved.
"I was dreading and uncomfortable with grief," she said. "And recently, I had this whole different thought of 'maybe grief is actually just this precious badge of love that you wear because someone has died and your love is continuing to grow.'"
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