JERUSALEM — Israeli soldiers recovered the body of Hersh Goldberg-Polin and the bodies of five other hostages from an underground tunnel in Rafah on August 31, 2024, following 328 days of captivity by Hamas. His mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, has been mourning in Jerusalem, where the family settled 18 years ago after moving from the United States with her husband Jon and their three children.

Hersh was taken hostage on October 7, when Hamas terrorists attacked the Nova Music Festival near the Gaza border, killing 378 people and wounding hundreds more. He had been at the festival that morning with his best friend, Aner Shapira. The two took cover in a bomb shelter where 16 people were killed. According to survivors, Shapira threw back at least ten grenades before he was killed. Hersh survived but was seriously wounded by a grenade in the shelter.

Four young men who had been wounded in the shelter, including Hersh, were taken outside, placed on a pickup truck, and driven into Gaza. On the 201st day of his captivity, Hamas posted a propaganda video showing the stump of Hersh's arm. On the 328th day, Hamas executed him in a tunnel in Gaza. He was shot six times at close range.

During his captivity, Hersh kept repeating the mantra "He who has a why can bear any how," a saying that appears in Viktor Frankl's 1946 memoir "Man's Search For Meaning" and was adapted by Frankl from Friedrich Nietzsche. When his body was brought back to Israel, thousands of people lined the streets and attended his funeral.

Reflecting on the months before her son's death, Rachel Goldberg-Polin said, "I realized that those 330 days had been the good part, because he was alive." Describing what the family endured during his captivity, she said, "To know that your child is being tortured, tormented, starved, abused. He's maimed. And that's an excruciating form of suffering."