In a television interview aired on the eve of Israel’s Memorial Day, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, one of the most recognizable voices in the campaign to bring Israeli hostges home from Gaza, described the grief that has shaped her life since her son Hersh was kidnapped on October 7, 2023.
Speaking with Anderson Cooper on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Goldberg-Polin said she feels that she failed in her mission to bring her son home. “We got all of these people home, not as we wanted. We wanted them home, alive, but they had come home,” she said.
Goldberg-Polin showed Cooper a ball of masking tape kept in Hersh’s room, made up of the numbers hostage families would wear on their clothes to mark the number of days in captivity.
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A ball of masking tape marked with the number of days hostages have spent in captivity, kept in Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s room. Credit: 60 Minutes/CBS via YouTube
A ball of masking tape marked with the number of days hostages have spent in captivity, kept in Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s room. Credit: 60 Minutes/CBS via YouTube
She said that between their two daughters, herself and her husband, Jon, over the course of more than 800 days, “we had 3,000 pieces of tape.”
“It’s extraordinary to see all the pain and everything that is in that ball,” she said. “You know, it’s like these symbols of failure.”
“Do you think you failed?” Cooper asked.
“Yeah,” Goldberg-Polin replied, acknowledging she did everything she possibly could. “Sometimes, 100 percent is not enough.”
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Members of the Goldberg-Polin family marked the number of days Hersh was held hostage in Gaza on strips of tape inside their home. Credit: 60 Minutes/CBS via YouTube
Members of the Goldberg-Polin family marked the number of days Hersh was held hostage in Gaza on strips of tape inside their home. Credit: 60 Minutes/CBS via YouTube
The interview with Goldberg-Polin, who was on TIME Magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world for 2024, was recorded in February, prior to the war with Iran. It was also ahead of the release of her book, titled “When We See You Again.” In it, she describes the pain of losing Hersh as “chronic, ever present, constant, gnawing, circular – not linear.”
Hersh, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, was attending the Nova music festival when Hamas invaded southern Israel on the morning of October 7, 2023. He fled to a nearby bomb shelter, where he was severely wounded by a grenade, losing his left hand. He was taken to Gaza and held there until late August 2024, when he and five other hostages were executed by Hamas in a tunnel.
She described the complicated hope that sustained the family after learning there was video of Hersh alive after the attack. Cooper had been the one to tell the family, after conducting an interview with them for CNN, that footage existed showing their son wounded but still alive as he was led away by his captors.
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“To this day, I am sorry that that is how you found out – that I was the one to tell you that there’s this video,” Cooper said, recalling the footage recovered from a Hamas militant’s phone that he was shown by Israeli soldiers while visiting the Nova festival site.
“But we were so thankful,” Goldberg-Polin said, “We were really grateful that you did it in such a human way. In this sideways world, when we had the proof that he was kidnapped, that was actually good,” she added.
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In late August 2024, Goldberg-Polin, her husband and other relatives of hostages gathered near the Gaza border and called out the names of their loved ones through a microphone, hoping they might somehow be heard inside the enclave. That same day, Hersh was killed.
Goldberg-Polin said she still wonders whether her son sensed his parents were calling for him. “I think there are other ways that you can hear your parents screaming for you, even if you don’t hear them,” she told Cooper.
Even after learning of Hersh’s death, Goldberg-Polin and her husband Jon remained active in the campaign to secure the release of the remaining hostages.
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Rachel Goldberg-Polin and her husband Jon speaking at a hostage rally in Tel Aviv, November, 2024. Credit: Itay Ron
Rachel Goldberg-Polin and her husband Jon speaking at a hostage rally in Tel Aviv, November, 2024. Credit: Itay Ron
In February 2025, Hamas released Israeli hostage Or Levy. Like Hersh, Levy and his wife had been attending the Nova festival when the invasion began, and they too fled to a bomb shelter. His wife, Einav, was killed by grenades thrown inside.
After he returned to Israel, Levy revealed that he and Hersh spent three days together in the tunnels beneath Gaza. “[Hersh] laughed about everything, and he smiled the entire time,” Levy says. “Hersh kept repeating this mantra. ‘He who has a why can bear any how.’ It became our mantra, everybody there.”
Levy also revealed critical information about Hersh to Goldberg-Polin, telling her that her son had known that she had spoken to Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time.
“And I said, ‘He heard on the news I had spoken to the secretary of state?’ And [Levy] said, ‘No. He heard you on the news.’ And it was like, all of a sudden, thank God – first of all, that he heard my voice, and that he knew [about the efforts being made to secure his release],” Goldberg-Polin said.
Goldberg-Polin told Cooper that her understanding of grief has been transformed by the loss of her son. She said that perhaps “grief is actually just this precious badge of love that you wear because someone has died and your love is continuing to grow.”