Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh was abducted October 7 and murdered by Hamas: Grief is a "badge of love"
Since Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel, two and a half years ago, and the war in Gaza began, far too many mothers, Palestinian and Israeli, have lost children. This is one mother's story. Her name is Rachel Goldberg-Polin. She's an American-Israeli who moved to Jerusalem 18 years ago with her husband Jon, and their three children. Her only son, Hersh, was badly wounded and taken hostage by Hamas on October 7th. Rachel and Jon worked tirelessly to bring Hersh and the other hostages home, but on the 328th day of his captivity, Hersh was executed in a tunnel in Gaza. Now like so many others, Rachel Goldberg-Polin is trying to figure out how to live after her child has died.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: To know that your child is being tortured, tormented, starved, abused. He's maimed. And that's an excruciating form of suffering. And then what's so fascinating to me is that when they came to tell us that Hersh had been executed, then I realized that those 330 days had been 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 walk through this place without a piece of me here?
Anderson Cooper: Have you figured that out yet?
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: I'm trying to reunderstand what it means to be in this world. There are millions of us right now who have buried children. There's nothing unique about me. But it creates light for me to try to give words to the pain.
Anderson Cooper: What was Hersh like?
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: Easy.
Anderson Cooper: Easy.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: The universe really knew what it was doing when it said, "Rachel's gonna have one son, so this is the one for her." I was really blessed.
Hersh and his best friend Aner Shapira were at the Nova Music Festival near the Gaza border on the morning of October 7th when Hamas terrorists attacked. They slaughtered 378 people, and wounded hundreds more.
Anderson Cooper: What do you remember about the morning of October 7th?
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: The sirens started. And I went and turned on my phone, And at 8:11 two messages had come in from Hersh. The first one said, "I love you." And the second one said, "I'm sorry." And that was it. Everything that had ever happened in my life, from the day I was born until that second, was over.
Hersh sent those texts from inside this bomb shelter crammed with more than two dozen people. That's Hersh against the wall and Aner near the entrance.
According to survivors, Aner threw back at least 10 grenades. When he was killed others took his place.
In all 16 people were killed in the shelter. Hersh survived but was seriously wounded by a grenade.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: There were four young men who were not able to hide under bodies. They were all wounded and they were taken outside and put on a pickup truck and-- driven into Gaza. And that footage we saw for the first time when we talked with you.
Anderson Cooper: We spoke on October 16 on CNN, you and Jon.
Jon on CNN: Our son by all accounts of the witnesses had his left arm blown off
When Jon said that I realized I'd seen their son being kidnapped.
Four days earlier, at the Nova festival site, Israeli soldiers showed me this gruesome video recovered from a terrorist's cellphone.
That's Hersh with a bone sticking out of his left forearm, being forced into a pickup truck.
Anderson Cooper: As soon as we got off I said-- "I need to call you." But I still -- to this day I'm.. I am sorry that that is how you found out, that I was the one to tell you that-- that there's this video.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: But we were so thankful. And it made us know that he was taken alive, that he walked on his own two feet. And we also 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.
Rachel became for many the face of the hostage crisis, meeting the pope, world leaders, and giving hundreds of interviews.
Every day she wore a piece of tape, on it she'd written the number of days since Hersh and the other 250 hostages were taken.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: I was always saying, "I love you. Stay strong. Survive. I love you. Stay strong. Survive. I love you. Stay strong. Survive."
Anderson Cooper: Was it a command to you as well?
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: Yes. Because there were times when I would just get seized with emotional and psychological and physical pain. And I would keel over onto Jon and I would just say, "How much longer? How much longer? How much longer?"
On the 201st day, Hamas posted this video of Hersh.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: And we see the stump of his arm.
Anderson Cooper: It was a propaganda video.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: Yes. And that gave us another bolt of adrenaline. Keep going, keep going, this child needs you.
On the 328th day, Rachel and Jon joined other hostage families, screaming their loved ones' names into a microphone towards Gaza.
Rachel didn't know it then, but that was the day her son was murdered by Hamas.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: We ended up finding out they killed him that day. And so I wonder, did he hear me?
Anderson Cooper: Do you think he did?
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: I think there are other ways that you can hear your parents screaming for you, even if you don't hear them.
It was in this underground tunnel in Rafah on Aug. 31, 2024, Israeli soldiers found Hersh's body. He and five other hostages had been executed. Hersh was shot six times at close range.
When his body was brought back to Israel, thousands lined the streets and attended his funeral.
Rachel and Jon continued to advocate for the remaining hostages, but they were desperate for details about the last year of their son's life.
Then in February 2025, something remarkable happened.
A hostage named Or Levy was released by Hamas along with two others.
When Or was reunited with his family and three-year-old son, he learned his wife, Eynav, was killed on October 7th. He was also told Hersh had been murdered.
Or Levy: It broke me. And I told my-- my parents right away, "I want –I want to meet their parents."
It turned out Or had spent three days with Hersh in a tunnel. And he says, something Hersh told him saved his life.
Or Levy: Seeing this guy without an arm, without a hand, and you know what he did? He laughed about it.
Anderson Cooper: About his hand?
Or Levy: Yeah. He laughed about everything. And he smiled the entire time.
Anderson Cooper: He wasn't broken.
Or Levy: No, he wasn't.
Or Levy: Hersh kept repeating this mantra. "He who has a why can bear any how."
'He who has a why can bear any how' is a mantra Hersh got from this book, "Man's Search For Meaning," a 1946 concentration camp memoir by a survivor, Viktor Frankl, who'd adapted a similar saying by Fredrich Nietzsche.
Or Levy: It became our mantra.
Anderson Cooper: Everybody there.
Or Levy: Everybody there.
Anderson Cooper: That idea that if you have a why, you can survive.
Or Levy: You can do anything.
Soon after he was freed, Or got Hersh's mantra tattooed on his arm.
Or Levy: My son, he asked me, "What does it say?" He doesn't speak English. And I just laughed, and I said, your name.
Anderson Cooper: "Your name." Because that's your why.
Or Levy: This is my why. The only reason why I survived was him.
Anderson Cooper: What was Hersh's why?
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: I asked Or that. And he said-- he went like this. You. It was this shocking, life-affirming CPR from beyond, to have Hersh, through Or, telling us, "What's your why gonna be, 'cause you can bear this, even this, even losing me, you can do it." And so part of what I'm trying so hard to do now is to figure out what is my why.
Rachel was told something else by Or that gave her tremendous comfort.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: He said, "It's important that you know that he told me that, 'My mother spoke to-- the secretary of state in the U.S.'"
Anderson Cooper: Hersh had told him that?
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: Yeah. And I said, "He heard on the news I had spoken to the secretary of state?" And he said, "No. He heard you on the news." And it was like, all the sudden, thank God. First of all, that he heard my voice, and that he knew. We are nobodies. We are absolute nobodies. I even say, the equivalent of John Doe in the Jewish world, is Rachel Goldberg. But we tried so hard. And he knew.
When we met Rachel in Jerusalem in February, days before the new war with Iran, she had recently finished writing a book called "When We See You Again," which comes out this week.
Anderson Cooper: You write in the book, "People want hope, resilience, recovery, strength, survival, healing. They want thriving and rising from the ashes, like the phoenix from the days of yore. But the pain is chronic, ever present, constant, gnawing, circular, not linear." That's how it feels?
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: That's how it feels, now. I'm open to it feeling different.
Anderson Cooper: Have you noticed a change?
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: I think my understanding of grief has changed. I was dreading, and uncomfortable with grief. And recently, I had-- this whole different thought of maybe, grief is actually just this precious badge of love that you wear because someone has died and your love is continuing to grow."
When the body of the last hostage was returned this past January, it had been 843 days since the October 7th attack. Rachel and Jon finally took down the pieces of tape their family had worn and stuck on a wall in their apartment.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: So many lives, so many innocent lives, on both sides, lost.
Rachel has kept Hersh's room as he left it.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: And that's the tape that we took down.
Anderson Cooper: Oh, my gosh.
Anderson Cooper: It's extraordinary to see. All the pain and everything that is in that ball.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: You know It's, like, these symbols of failure. What we were fighting for did happen. We got all of these people home, not as we wanted. We wanted them home, alive, but they had come home.
Anderson Cooper: You said it's-- these are all symbols of failure. Do you think you failed?
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: Yeah.
Anderson Cooper: You-- you did more than anybody could possibly do.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin: It's true. And sometimes, 100% is not enough.
Produced by Katie Brennan. Associate producer, Matthew Riley. Broadcast associate, Grace Conley. Edited by Thomas Xenakis.