When Hersh Goldberg-Polin was in the tunnels in Gaza, fellow hostages say he often quoted a line from Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.'” Through his long months in captivity, family and friends hoped that, like Frankl, he would come back with a message of hope. Then, in August 2024, after nearly a year in captivity, he and five other hostages were shot dead by their captors deep underground, likely as Israeli forces were closing in. The quest for his why has fallen to his family, who led a high-profile campaign for his release. His mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, has a new book out Tuesday, reports the AP.
When We See You Again, has no narrative arc, no tidy uplifting message, no score settling with the Hamas militants who killed her son or the Israeli leaders who many blamed for his death—only a searing account of her grief. She hasn’t yet decided whether the book is an exceptionally painful love story, or a love-filled pain story. “I’m still trying to figure out with clarity what is my why, but it’s clear to me that my why is not done,” Goldberg-Polin said. Hersh was among the 251 people abducted by Hamas in its Oct. 7, 2023, attack. His hand was blown off by a grenade before he was dragged into Gaza and eventually into the militant group’s labyrinth of tunnels. By the time a ceasefire in the war was reached in October, Hersh had been killed, along with five other hostages, more than a year earlier.
Goldberg-Polin’s son was among the best-known hostages. Posters and graffiti with his name and face still appear across the country, often bearing the line from Frankl. “Hersh has become a symbol to many,” Goldberg-Polin writes. “I don’t know what to do with that. But it’s OK. If people need Hersh to be something, he will be that. That is the essence of service, being what is needed.” She only briefly touches on his capture and the details of his captivity, which have been widely reported. She writes about their desperate search for information in the chaotic and terrifying days after the attack, their long fight for his release and the news of Hersh’s killing, along with five others, after 328 days.
The book is mostly a “very raw, peeled, oozing, throbbing pain,” Goldberg-Polin said. She describes “hundreds of sodden days dripping with anguish.” During the campaign to release the hostages, one of Rachel’s mantras was “Hope is mandatory,” even when it felt impossible. Now, wherever they go, people ask her and her husband for a bit of their creased and crumpled hope. She has no easy answers, as she tells Hersh in a letter addressed to her dead son near the end of the book. “I will carry your why,” she writes. “I’ll do it, I’ll carry your why around the world.”