Rachel Goldberg-Polin on Her Son Hirsch, Hy"d: "Those 330 days were the good part—because he was alive"

In Hirsch Goldberg-Polin's room in Jerusalem, everything remains just as it was on the morning of October 7—except for one thing: a small ball made from pieces of masking tape. On each strip is a number—the number of days his mother, Rachel, counted from when her son was kidnapped until his body was returned to Israel. In an interview on 60 Minutes on the American network CBS, Rachel looks at the ball and calls it a "symbol of failure." "What we fought for did happen," she says painfully. "We brought these people home, but not the way we wanted. We wanted them alive."

His last messages: "I love you. I'm sorry."

Hirsch, a 23-year-old Israeli American, was Rachel and Jon's only child. On the morning of the massacre in the south, he was at the Nova festival. At 8:00 a.m., he sent his family a short message: "I love you." Ten minutes later came the second and final message: "I'm sorry." Hirsch fled to a shelter that became a death trap, where his arm was severed by a grenade blast. He managed to tie a tourniquet on himself before he was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists, wounded and bleeding.

One of the family's most shattering moments came on October 16, 2023, during an interview on CNN. Anchor Anderson Cooper realized, mid-conversation, that the harrowing clip he'd seen days earlier—showing a wounded young man being loaded onto a truck—was Rachel and Jon's son. In the current interview, Cooper, his voice breaking, apologized for the way they found out the devastating news. With grace, Rachel replied: "We were grateful that you told us. It made us know he was taken alive, that he was walking on his own two legs."

הירש גולדברג-פולין הי"ד (צילום: באדיבות המשפחה)

A year of relentless advocacy

Since her son's abduction, Rachel hasn't rested for a moment. She spoke at the UN, met world leaders, and was named to Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people. Every day she pinned the day's count to her lapel and repeated to herself: "I love you. Stay strong. Survive."

On day 201, Hamas released a video of Hirsch from captivity. "It gave us an adrenaline shot," she recalls. On day 328, Rachel stood at the border and shouted into a microphone toward Gaza, hoping her son would hear her. She did not know this was the day Hirsch was murdered in a dark tunnel in Rafah, together with five other hostages.

For 11 months, Hirsch was held in inhuman conditions, in a narrow tunnel 20 meters underground, until he was shot to death at close range by his captors in August 2024, together with five other hostages — Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lubanov, Almog Sarusi, and Carmel Gat Hy"d.

Now, Rachel is trying to find a way to move forward. "What struck me is that when they came to tell us that Hirsch had been murdered, I realized that those 330 days were 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 keep going in this place when a part of me isn't here?"