Those were the last words Rachel Goldberg-Polin heard from her son.
The pain is chronic, ever present, constant, knawing, circular. not linear.
On August 31, 2024, exactly 2 years ago, Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s body was one of six bodies recovered from a Hamas tunnel in Rafah, Gaza.
As a reminder, on October 7, 2023, approximately 6,000 Hamas and other terrorists from Gaza invaded southern Israel, killing at least 1,200 people—mostly civilians—and abducting 251 hostages to Gaza in what became the deadliest single day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
I don’t know about you all, but since the October massacre, one person to be admired is Rachel Goldberg-Polin. Hebrew: רייצ׳ל גולדברג-פולין;
Goldberg-Polin, her husband and their three children migrated to Israel in the early 2000s. They live in Jerusalem.
Unwittingly, she became a valued spokesperson for the release of all of the hostages.
Rachel recalls that on day 328, they were invited to Gaza to shout to loved ones.
Rachel screamed Hersh’s name into the provided microphone:
May god bless you and keep you, May god shine his faith upon you.
They killed him that day.
After 328 days in the tunnels.
Hersh was executed by Hamas in a tunnel in on August 31, 2024. His body and five others were discovered in an underground tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip.
Israeli forensics experts said they had been shot at close range.
Twenty-nine of them were hiding in 5’ x 8’ shelter.
Hamas came to the doorway and was throwing in hand grenades.
There was screaming, there was blood, there was dying.
“When they came to tell us that Hersh had been executed, then I realized that those 330 days had been the good part because Hersh was alive,” Rachel shared. “It creates light for me to try to give words to the pain.”
“At the funeral, Hersh was wrapped in a prayer shawl and I could see the contour of his face through the shawl.”
“My understanding of grief has changed. Maybe grief is actually just this precious badge of love that you wear because someone has died and your love is continuing to grow,” Goldberg-Polin reflected.
“It was very clear to me that I was burying part of myself.”
Later, the family found a few journal pages, written in Hebrew. His sister calls it a prophecy: “What I’m sure of is I’m walking toward the end of that tunnel,” Hersh wrote this journal entry 2015, when he was 15 years old, 8 years before his murder. In it, the word ‘tunnel’ is written 20 times.
Why?
Interview 60 Minutes: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2148208229307711
