In Israel last week, L.A. Elbog wanted to do something about his daughter, Wiri, who'd been captured by Hamas a year ago when she was 18 and is still hostage somewhere in Gaza. And so he took a bullhorn and went to stand outside an event that was being held by the prime minister's political party, Likud. Basically, he wanted the people running the country to make some kind of deal with Hamas and bring his daughter home.
And so, okay, he's standing there with his bullhorn, this grieving, worried parent who doesn't know if he's ever going to see his child again. And someone throws an egg at him. And another egg. Somebody yells and calls him a cancer on Israel. Somebody else accuses him of being funded by Yahya Simwar, the head of Hamas.
This is not unusual in Israel. The country was bitterly divided between people like these hostage families who were saying stop the fighting, make a deal with Hamas, bring home the hostages.
And on the other side, the Prime Minister's supporters and his coalition, people running the government, who want to press on with the war and get to a more complete victory over Hamas. I have an Israeli friend who said to me that this war is different from ones in the past in Israel because in the past, he said, once the war started, everybody united. This time, it's driven people further apart. It's the point where even these anguish families who you think would have universal sympathy in a country at war are the target of all kinds of hate.
Some other examples. A real estate mogul, who's also a big, good, crude supporter, writes tweets that call for the death of the mother of one of the hostages. Or here's a video that was posted online of an Israeli right-winger on a motorcycle who pulls over next to a group of hostage families and tells them, you're going to be murdered. I'm going to murder you. Mark my words.
So in Israel, supporting the hostages for so many people has come to mean that you oppose the Israeli government and the way that they're conducting the war and you want to cease fire and to deal with Hamas. I think here in the United States, we have a different picture of the hostages than what they stand for. Here, I think there's this feeling that if you support the hostages, you support the war and the current Israeli government and the way it's conducted that war with all the bombings and death
The hostages are a symbol, but a symbol that means different things to different people in the U.S. and Israel. It's been a year since the hostages were taken. The current conflict with Hamas began last October 7th, with a killing of 1,200 people and the kidnapping of 251 others. So much has happened since then, of course. Israel killed over 40,000 Palestinians. 90% of the population, almost 2 million Palestinians, have been displaced from their homes.
This past week Israel expanded the word of Lebanon with a ground invasion, Iran sent missiles in response, and the White House has been scrambling to try to stop a full-out regional war. At this point, this war is about so many other things than the hostages.
But those 251 people, 117 of them released or rescued, 70 dead, and 64 were presumed alive and in captivity. They're still this symbol. They're on posters that people put up and other people tear down. They don't bring them home bracelets. But they're also, you know, people, each having their own personal and specific experience of this war, an experience of politics flattens and wipes away.
Just two weeks after the Hamas attack, very early on, an 85-year-old hostage named Yogevit Leafshitz was released and sent home. Israelis were pretty excited. They did a press conference from the hospital. Just put on live TV and a wheelchair. Her daughter helped her hear the questions and give answers. Somebody asked, when Hamas released you, why did you shake the Hamas guy's hand? Her reply? Because they treated us very nicely.
My mom is saying that they were very delicate and gentle with them and took care of all their needs. Television commentator is a newspaper columnist, jumped in, calling this press conference a disaster, a propaganda win for Hamas, an embarrassment for the hospital. Mind you, Leeschitz also said a lot of awful things about Hamas and her abduction. Attackers running rampant, beating people young and old. They hit her in the ribs with a wooden pole. But the story that came out of the press conference was that she said something nice about Hamas.
Within a month, the hospital spokesman who organized that press conference was out of the job. There's certain things that Israelis just did not want to hear right then. Here at our program, throughout this year, we've tried to document what this war has been for Palestinians and also for Israelis. And this week, a year after those people became hostages, we thought it might be a good time to hear about their actual lived experiences, all the complicated parts that don't fit neatly into some symbolic picture of them.
There are these long interviews that an Israeli journalist, Lee Naeem, has been doing with hostages who have been released on a daily news podcast called Ikhad Biom, one a day.
And these interviews you get to hear them just talking at length and on a sound bite and an image on a poster, you hear what really happened. The complexity of what they went through and what they saw about one of the things that's especially interesting, I think, to hear is the hostages stories about their interactions with the people holding them captive, who I have to say they come across with way more dimension than I might have guessed.
So most of this hour, we're going to be hearing from one of the hard beyond interviewees, a woman named Ren Almag Goldstein. And then when we get to the second half of the show, we're going to hear from a few of the other hostages who were interviewed. I hope you stick around. From WBE's to Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Eric Glass. Stay with us.
It's his American life. Part one, the abduction. Just to heads up, if you're listening with kids, some of this gets intense. So, Hannah Malg Goldstein lived in a couple of boats called Kfar Aza, about two miles from the Gaza border, with her husband Adav and their four children. She and Adav met in junior high school. She worked as a social worker for a while, but then focused on raising her kids.
The morning of October 7th, sirens went off and they went to the safe room in their house. One of the things a lot of people talk about in these interviews is how mystified they were that the army did not show up. For many Israelis, that is the second astonishing thing that happened that morning that the military forces Israelis trust to keep them safe and didn't arrive for over eight hours. Reasons it still haven't been formally investigated.
Han's family stayed in the safe room for five hours. Then, men entered the house, reached where they were. Shot her husband and dove in the chest, she says, right in front of them. Soon after that, they shot her oldest daughter, Yom, in the face. Yom was 20, and Home won't leave from her mandatory military service. Han says the last time she saw Yom, she was flailing on the floor.
Then Huan and her three other children will let outside. There was her 17-year-old daughter, a gom. And also her two sons, who were younger, 11 and 9.
They let us do a dev's car. First in a dev's car and then to my car, they tried to start a dev's car, but his car, when it's starting, it's very quiet. If you don't know the car, you probably wouldn't understand. So they probably thought it's not working and they brought the keys to my car and we got into my car.
And I'm looking to the bushes, still hoping that maybe someone will signal to me with their finger. Maybe I tell the kids to escape, but on the other hand, it was dangerous. I remember realizing this is very crucial what I decide right now. I was afraid they had us now.
I remember the kids' faces on the way to Gaza. Very deep, terrified looks at me. I remember they asked me what happened to my lips. The boys, my lips were probably white. I was shocked. I was completely shocked.
And I'm in the car with the kids on the way to Gaza and I need to like understand and figure out that it was really important for me to tell the kids first that Yum is not with us anymore and Adav probably isn't as well. They're happy. They're very happy. I remember the driver and the guy next to him. They're filming us. I remember we were putting our heads down, Agam and me.
Then they stopped near the fence. It was their fence already because it was after some drive through the field. And they piled dead bodies on my car. I remember I got, I'm telling the boys to look away. And after seven minutes wearing Gaza, it's unbearable how easy it was and how fast. I mean, first of all, we were in shock. I was in shock.
I said this a couple of times in her interview. The part of what was so stunning about being taken hostage was how quick it was. One minute she was in her home. Minutes later, she was in Gaza in captivity.
I remember like a deserted area. There are papers flying in the air. And then they stop my car. They put us in another car. We drive, follow more, and then a gate opens. The car goes in and the gate closes.
They're at a private home. That's where the car stops. When is it a kids? Until then, they held it together. That entire time, the kids were just so level-headed. Their conduct was so... It was amazing. They didn't cry. They didn't do anything dangerous. They didn't yell. They didn't try to hold on to my clothes. I think they even tried to talk to terrorists, like talk to them in English. But now, next to this private home, to see the entrance to a tunnel.
And this is the first time that Tal was nine at a time. This is the first time he's crying. He saw this black hole and he got scared. Tal cried a bit when he stared at this tunnel, but he calmed down. They brought him water. And that's it. We're going down this tunnel.
It's not very deep. And we meet other hostages from Farazan, an elderly couple, a young guy, and each is telling their own kidnapping story, and we can't believe we're in Gaza.
Can you describe the condition in the tunnel? There was sand everywhere and also in our mouth. There was a hallway that leads to this small room with some mattresses. There's constant sweeping because there's constant sand. And it's pretty hot there, 27 degrees. 27 degrees, that's 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
27 degrees and very humid, very damp. 100 kids plus the three other hostages from their kibbutz. What kept in the tunnel for two nights, she says. 1.1 of the guards brings a deck of cards to keep the kids occupied. The boys remember were 9 and 11. Agam's the oldest, 17.
And Agam got some sort of panic. It actually started hyperventilating. She couldn't breathe. And so they attempted to calm her down. They said, you'll be back in Israel. By Tuesday, Tuesday, you're back. And this was said on Monday. We were kidnapped on Saturday. And the truth is, I thought so too. I thought we'll be back by Tuesday.
We're in Gaza with children. Israel is not going to attack. Israel is not going to do what it always does first. They're going to free us and then they're going to figure out what they're going to do. On Tuesday, they do leave the tunnel, not for Israel. They're taken to a house next to the tunnel.
And it's a house that is full of the sounds of kids, babies, women. And there we can already hear the attacks Gaza is being bombarded at this point. And then they start prepping us for another move. Any move through the streets, that they would be surrounded by Gazans, there's a round of civilians, there's always a production. Because the captives were hiding them from the Israelis, from the general public, from everybody.
They didn't want people to know that there were Israeli hostages walking right beside them on the street. So they put a garment clean into full-length jalabias and hijabs. Two boys got them tall, got hats. Then they moved them outside. It's five days into the war. Israel's bombarding Gaza. 100 kids see Israeli jets flying overhead.
Han says she and Agam take all this in and say fout up to each other. Fout is a big Israeli TV series, an action show about military special ops in the West Bank and Gaza. They end up in an apartment where they spend the next five weeks, most of their time in Gaza. Part two, daily life and captivity.
So different hostages say they were held by different militant groups in all sorts of locations and all sorts of conditions. Some hostages have been released, said they were beaten or sexually assaulted. Heinz family is now in a residential apartment building, guarded by two men who very much wanted to give them a secret from all the civilians living around them on all sides, which have lots of consequences for the way they lived. Heinz and members are being really hot in that apartment.
They had an electric fan, electricity was only on for an hour or two a day. So it's very hard without the fan when the windows are pretty much closed. There are heavy curtains on the windows and we weren't allowed to go near them. We weren't allowed. They keep opening them, closing them, open clothes. They don't want anyone to hear us, even people just in the building or, of course, people on the streets.
I remember it was very hard for me to fall asleep there. I was always the last one, always tossing and turning, because you're sweating there the whole time. Everything is wet, you're just soaked and sweat. And there are bombings at night, and at that stage in this apartment where a war they were still like explaining to us like,
This is bombings from the sky, this is from the sea, this is artillery, and when the house shook, they would move with us, sway with us. I don't know which form, maybe fifth. At that stage, at least they would say, by the by, like it's far, like you hear the whistle, you know the fall is going to be far. They were trying to tell us it's going to be okay, it's far, they tried to calm us down, they wanted us to be okay.
Living among the Palestinians, the Israeli hostages suffered through some of the same hardships of the war. Many hostages in their interviews talk about how hungry they were. The captives tried to give them two meals a day. As the Israeli bombing campaign progressed, of course, and the army rolled in, food and water got harder and harder to get in Gaza. To the point where now Gaza is on the edge of famine, according to the United Nations.
water, they try to provide drinking water. You can't drink water from the tap. First of all, there isn't like a steady flow of water. Sometimes there's just a drip and it's basically salt water. Bathroom, very difficult bathroom. You can't just like flush the water. Maybe we had it in the first two days, but then we couldn't flush the water. There was a really bad smell in the bathrooms.
When Power would come on for an hour sometimes, she says, they'd get running water. And then they had to decide who could shower, guards or some of them. The guy I'm the teenager really wanted to wash her hair. With all that competition, Glenn says, she pretty much gave up on showers for herself.
I felt very strange in Gaza physically, the whole stay in Gaza. It was very weak and I kept thinking about what happened at home. I forced myself to remember how I less saw Yum after she was shot. Like, it was like a form of torture, of self-punishment.
Fortunately, over time, as time passes, that image gets blurry, and I remember Yama's beautiful and happy, but I remember at first I was really forcing myself to not forget how I saw her. I mean, the whole thing just took seconds and I ran outside. I ran outside to the kids.
I didn't go down to help her. I didn't check on her. I was terrified. Looking back now, I realized that in a way I chose life. I went outside to Agam and Gal and Tal.
Now, in this apartment, with those three surviving kids, Han says she was in a constant state of alert to protect them. She says she cried every day, but the captors did not like seeing them cry. She says they wanted them happy, not sad, so she tried to conceal all that. One night, she says the apartment started shaking from a bomb that fell nearby, and the guards had them evacuate. They all go into the street.
There's total darkness, it's 7 p.m., and Gaza is destroyed, is devastated, and we're walking outside. We didn't walk long, but we were outside me and the kids, and all of a sudden there was fire on us. I see the red lasers and the balls of fire shooting on us, fire. From airplanes?
That's how it looked like. It came from above, from the air. And they discussed with us many times the absurdity of the fact that they are protecting us from our own military. We had many conversations with them about it, about how absurd it is. And they would really put it in our faces and kind of laugh about and smile about it. And would be like, do you understand what is going on here? We are watching you. We are protecting you.
It was one night, we spent the night in the supermarket and it was the first time there was an attack right near us on the street and the supermarket, the whole place shook and it's like a crazy jackhammer. It's just getting closer and closer to you. We already saw all the rocks coming our way and it's so scary. It feels like the seconds before death.
And they are with their bodies, the terrorists that sell that watch us. They're with their bodies on us, covering us on the matrices, protecting us from attacks of our own military. The complicated relationship they have with their captors, that's subject to Part 3, the guards.
In general, the only Hamas members who talk to the media are official spokespeople and leaders. One of the things about these hostage interviews is that they give a glimpse of lower-level operatives, some Hamas, some with other militant groups operating in Gaza who are keeping Israelis hostage. Here's Lee Naim, the interviewer.
So, for example, at the end of the day, these are the people holding you and your life depends on them. So, with all the hate, I assume it was a very uncomfortable situation. I imagine myself, I want them to like me so I can survive. So, how did you manage it?
Yeah, we realized our lives are in their hands. We realized they were just a cog in the system that they're not the people making the decisions. Sometimes we would ask them, if someone gave you the decision to hurt us, would you do that? And they would say, no, we are going to die before that happens. Worst case, we're all going to die together. And that was pretty encouraging to hear.
Han says that eventually there were four men guarding her family. With 12 and they were 28, 30, 37, and 44 years old. Three married, two with kids. The youngest had a failed engagement. The oldest was the most religious Han said. He would read the most. One of them was running Hebrew. I would ask a gomme if she could help him study years or dates.
What was the most surprising thing that you discovered about them? Their sensitivity at times. How much they missed their wives. At some point, one of them wrote a letter to his wife and it was contagious because then another one wrote a letter to his wife.
I'm just going to drop here because I just want to point out the intimacy of this. These people rock together in a dark, hot, stuffy apartment, planes dropping bombs around them who cannot help but notice what the others are doing in this cramped space. It's so personal. But at the same time, they are not on the same team. There's a distance. So when playing on the gobs, see them all raiding under sugar wives,
And it made us really nervous, Agam and I. We were like, why do you need to write letters to your wives right now? Is something going on? Is there something that's about to happen? One of them said he had an agreement with his wife to put the letter in his pocket. So if they found his body, they find it in the pocket. We saw their pain sometimes. We could see their pain. We saw them breaking down and cry.
About the uncertainty of what's going on with the family, whether their family was hurt or no, that was the main thing. Yeah, it seems so, yeah. Yes, I mean, I felt like they really liked Galintal, despite all the harm that was done. And there was harm done.
Beyond their activity in Hamas, they also had a business of perfumes, and they really showed us they brought a box with all the perfumes. They wanted Agamini to check it out, to try it, and tell them what we thought, what we liked. They really showed us the syringes, how they make it with the percentages of the alcohol, how they put it all together.
We also started having conversations about the roots and the depth of the conflict. From their perspective, we were the first ones who murdered. We were the ones who deported and murdered their parents in 48. 1948. The year Israel became a state. The violence in that period resulted in the deaths of 15,000 Palestinians and the displacement of over 750,000 others.
When the conversation reached those points, that's when we would stop because it would just get too tense. Because we didn't agree with them, but on the other hand, we also didn't know all the facts to argue with them. So we didn't want to upset them too much. We wanted to be okay with them. Sometimes, though, Hun couldn't help herself. Like she says, every time they were moved from one apartment to another, passed from one group of captors to the next, the new ones would always ask, is this the family?
And then I needed to explain to them that, yes, you murdered my husband, you murdered my daughter, so this is the family. And then sometimes after that, there would be like a silence. And sometimes they would say that if the person who murdered Yamuna Dove did it in vain, like if Yamuna Dove warned a real threat, that person on the day of his death, he will be judged.
If he killed them in vain, he'll go to hell. If not, he'll go to paradise. Sometimes there was this moment of silence or they would apologize when they realized that their own people, their brothers, killed Nadavaniyam. Generally though, her captors were pretty unrepentant and open about their hopes for the future.
They also told us, we like you, you're a good family. Don't go back to Faazan. We'll come back there again. How many will we last time? Like 3,000? How many people do you think we have in our organizations? They ask me an Agam. Agam and I would try 20,000, 40,000. So we'll come, they say, in three years, and three years we'll rebuild, and then 40,000 will come again.
They were in euphoria. In the seven weeks that we were there in Gaza, our impression was that they were in... they were elated over their success on October 7th, and that they plan to come again. We never got the impression that their spirits are being hurt because of the attacks. Part 4, news from home. There's a radio in the apartment.
And sometimes the guards would have a high note of family listen, but it was an ordeal to get them to agree to that. For the news came on, they were begged to be allowed to listen to 10 minutes' worth.
And used cast where they didn't talk about the hostages really broke our hearts. We just couldn't accept that they are talking about deepening the fighting and they don't talk about us. And when we came back we actually talked about it and we noticed that ever since they are making an effort to always at the top of the hour to mention the hostages. Because we really waited for it every time.
listening to the radio, they started to piece together how big the attacks of October 7th had been. They had no idea of the scope. Other hostages said this too. One told the interviewer that she was shocked to hear that 75 people from her kibbutz, a fifth of the kibbutz, had been taken hostage. She thought it was just her and the three other people who she'd met in captivity. I was listening to a broadcast when her own father came on the air, talking about them.
And the radio host is saying goodbye and saying we're sorry for Nadav and Yam. That's when I finally realized that they're not with us anymore. Up until then, she'd held out hope that maybe the army had come right afterwards and saved Nadav.
That was the first time that Gal, who's 12, now is 12, cried. We really moved to hear my dad, on one hand and on the other hand, very, very sad. And still, we kept asking for the radio. One day on the radio, they heard about the dramatic rescue of a hostage named Oremigiddish by the Israeli military. That news really seemed to get to their guards.
The guards started acting very differently. They started going crazy. They wore their bulletproof vest and they put their uniforms like they became more like soldiers. Their stress immediately affected us, was projected on us. I remember at some point they were also taking out some sort of grenade in case someone is going to break the door. And they told us if they're going to break the door, we're all going to hide in the bathroom together. It was just awful stress.
I mean, we were jealous of her. We were jealous that they were able to get to her and rescue her. But we also, we saw what it did to our guards. That's why after they rescued the last three hostages two months ago, I immediately thought, I mean, it's a happy thing. Each one is
A universe, it's a life, but I immediately thought, what does it mean for the people still there? Are they being guarded more intensely? Are they being transferred from one place to another now? I was scared. Maybe they're hurting them more. Maybe they're doing something to them now.
Hanamau Goldstein, being interviewed by Lee Naim. The story continues, and we hear from other hostages, including one who met the head of Hamas in a tunnel. That's in a minute, which got a good bubble radio when our program continues.
to American life from our glass. Today's show, 51 Days. A year after the Hamas attack on the Israel that started the current war, we're hearing the story of Han Amag Goldstein, who was held hostage with three of her kids for 51 days. And before we get back to her story, I wanted to play you a few clips from some of the other interviews that Lee Naim did with hostages for the Israeli news podcast, Khad Baeom, one a day.
One of the interviews she did gave a glimpse of life in a tunnel that's very different from Ken's experience. This is somebody who spent her entire time and captivity in the tunnels. A 78-year-old named Margolite Moses.
To give you a sense of her personality, her captors at some point started calling her the captain. Because in that particular group of hostages, she would be the one to suggest things to the guards like, don't cook the potatoes in the morning and then serve them to us hours later. Cook them surely before we eat them and bring them warm. Put them on a plate with a bit of salt. People like salt on their potatoes.
Marguerite says, when she arrived in Gaza, they walked deep into the tunnels, an hour and a half or two hours. For they arrived at the rooms underground where she and about 15 people from her kaboots were held. There were mattresses in the floor and chairs. Oh, we had an elegant room.
Really, we had a room that was covered with ceramics, both the floors and the walls. Except for the ceiling that was both curved and painted white with lime.
The walls were decorated with a beautiful delicate design and high up above the drawings of tulips with beautiful green leaves. How organized and prepared did the tunnels do they seem? The tunnels were very, very organized.
I walked around even at night. I didn't have that much to do unless somebody wanted to go to the bathroom, and I helped them." Margui was up all night because she's somebody who needs a CPAP machine to sleep. She brought one with her, but her captors took it. And then she asked the doctor for another one. She had he smiled and laughed and said, I don't have those here. So she says she didn't sleep for more than five or ten minutes at a time, for nearly two months.
So at night, up anyway, she would walk people to the toilet.
So I was walking around at night in the tunnels, and generally we were only allowed to get to a certain point, beyond which they said, you can't go. And I constantly was wondering, what is there that they don't let us go there? Do they have some weapons there, or I don't know what? So one night when I saw that they were all asleep,
even that person that was supposed to be awake to supposedly watch over us. So I said, I really have to go see what's there. Then I arrive and I see that there was a splitting of a few tunnels.
So I picked to see into each one what's there. And here there's this one tunnel full to the brim with lots of six packs of mineral water. So straight away one bottle here, one bottle there. It's like you hit them. And that's how we had mineral water at least for a few days.
She said one tunnel she looked down had mattresses, others had electrical wires and water pipes. Near the room in the tunnel there was a kitchenette, a chalice or canned food, and there was a group of hostages that were in a room that was mostly open but had some cages, she said, like for prisoners on the side.
So it was really organized from the point of view, the tunnels. Numbers, each floor, different color. They sometimes had to walk around with notes that explained to them where to turn, because the place is huge. Map, map, map, map. Maps, yes, maps. We reached minus five sometimes.
minus five, five cores down. When they were afraid they might be soldiers outside, they called us to come quickly, quickly. So we went downstairs quickly, and then we saw minus five. So just imagine kilometers and kilometers in five floors.
Incredibly, one day, the second day of their captivity, Marglade says they had a visit from the man responsible for their kidnapping and the deaths of their loved ones, the head of Hamas himself, Yakhastin War. Like I say, I find this to be a completely believable story because nothing dramatic happens in this story at all.
Like if you made up a story like this, the head of Hamas would say something fascinating and revealing, or she would get off some great line. None of that happens. It just seems like he ordered people to bring back hostages. They did. It's the next day. And he wants to see some of them for himself. Here's Mark Leads account.
He entered the room with his entourage. He asked us, do you know who I am? So I said to him, yes, he has seen one. So he opened his eyes big. He was surprised and used his name.
And he said, yes, it's true. He speaks fluent Hebrew very well. And he said not to be afraid and they will give us anything we need. And that we are only there to be bargaining checks for prisoner exchange. How did it feel to hear that from him?
It's horrifying. The audacity with which he said it, with his nose up in the air, for me, it was an unpleasant moment. This arrogance of his accumulates you. And most of us were older people. What is the point of kidnapping older people and putting them there?
So that's Margolite Moses, who was released around the same time as Han and her family. I want to put you some stuff from one other interview before we get back to Han. Ata Sagi is 75 years old, and from the same kibbutz as Margolite. Her life and captivity was very different from Margolites or Han's for a few reasons, and one of them is that she speaks Arabic, taught it in middle schools, partly out of an idealistic belief in coexistence and wanting to speak with her neighbors.
And so she understood what was being said around her when she was in captivity, understood where she was October 7, when she was driven south to the city of Hanyunas.
We arrived at a vegetable sorting warehouse at the Eastern outskirts of Hanulis. They unloaded us, took from us some jewelry I had from my mother, wedding band, my glasses. And I begged them to leave the glasses because without them I completely lose an orientation.
They took it because they claimed that it has a tracking chip in it. And they are petrified by chips. Did you try to explain that? Yes. I tried to explain it more. Do I have it in common with a chip? Well, they said you used to be a soldier. They said that to a 75-year-old woman because there is mandatory military service in Israel. So she served.
But when I was a soldier, there was no computer, and there were no chips. They explained that every soldier has a chip, and I said, I wish it was true. If it was true, you would know where everybody is. In that warehouse, somebody stood and did the check-in. He was an English-speaking person.
He asked for first name, last name, ID number from where we are. And he also was asking for the phone number of the children. Naturally, I invented the phone numbers. Oh, the multi-check in a bit, Malone. I said, it's like check in into a hotel.
Another fact about Ada, she left her home without putting on shoes. Her captors told her, don't put them on. And so she spent her entire captivity barefoot, though she was given a pair of socks in November when it got colder. Ada was held captive with another woman from her kibbutz, Mae Love Tal, who's in her 50s, 20 years younger than Ada. Not somebody she knew well before this. But the fact that there was somebody else to share this with, really defined her time as a hostage.
made it easier. They put us in the children bedroom.
There were two bunk beds. They gave us the lower beds. I had the drawing of angry birds, and Marav had the drawing of sweet dreams. How did you pass the time, you and Marav? Hours and hours of logic games, and we were playing a crossword puzzle in our heads.
We were talking about our family, every child, grandchild. We got to know each other, family as if the two of us were sisters. Did you also share your worries? Yes, we were very, very much partners in our worries. They also talked to their guards. One guard spoke some English, and out of course spoke Arabic.
One of the guards in particular, she says, was very loyal to her in Mirav. He listened to Al Jazeera and tell them what was happening in the news. He said all the time that I'm treating you as if you were my mother. I felt that there is some respect. We know that his wife is a midwife at the NASA Hospital in Hanyunas. He has four kids. He evacuated her and the kids from the home to her parent's home.
Yes, he told us a lot. At one time while he was telling that he said, I'm not involved, and I said, what do you mean, I'm not involved? And he said, neither do you have no Hamas, but I want money.
I asked him, but myself and Merav are at your place in the kid's room. You took away our freedom, our basic right, and you say that you are not involved. And he said, I want money. I want money for myself and my wife to get visa for us and the kid and fly away from here because there is no future here.
Okay, back to Glenn and her family. We are at part five, moving around. One of the things you realize I'm listening to Glenn is just how much of the experience of being a hostage can be just being moved from place to place. No idea where you are or where you're going or why. Clips don't are gone worried every time they were moved.
that this was the time they were going to be taken somewhere to be killed. When they walked through the streets, they were supposed to keep their eyes down and blend in. The captors gave them fake names to use as if anybody tried to talk to them, and they would practice the pronunciation of the names with them to be sure they got them right.
That night, they thought they might die in that supermarket. 100 kids were moved to an apartment above the supermarket till that building started shaking. It didn't seem safe. And they moved to a mosque for shelter. And then they headed out on what Han remembers as a long journey through the streets of Gaza, part of it on a donkey cart.
Aida Vasar Adonki, like on a card attached to Adonki, and Adonki is stumbling and bombing all around. Bombings, yeah, and roads that would end, and they would have to ask the locals whether we can pass through or not, and then Adonki wouldn't need to make a U-turn. Finally, they reached an apartment, which he says was still under construction.
Maybe a month and a half into their captivity, not long before the end. One of the guards takes Han and her kids out of the apartment and onto the street. Very long walk in the streets of Gaza. We're outside and for the first time we see the sound down and then we get to a school.
All around the school were Palestinian civilians who were seeking shelter and planning new kids in their disguises. Apparently they looked like just another displaced Palestinian family, leading out.
People were putting all these sheets and putting together these impromptu tents and there's a lot of people there and they approached the guy from the cell and they offer to house us, to host us. He kept saying that people are offering help because they see family with kids so they offer to help.
We're, for the first time after six weeks, we're sitting outside and we're seeing the moon. And Tal is telling me, hey, mom, look, this is the moon. And there was an excitement in the air, too, because there was a feeling of, like, ceasefire might be coming. Hey, man, did you believe it? Yeah, it looked like, yes, I wished for it.
And then I look at the sky and I show Tal and I tell him, look which stars are moving and which stars are staying still because the skies were packed with planes. And then all of a sudden people near the school launched rockets and they were so thrilled with every rocket they launched. And I was immediately scared, like maybe now the planes are going to bomb the school.
Then she says, the guard who is with them, who'd been with them for weeks, said goodbye to clan, wished him a quick return to Israel, told her to take good care of a gom, and handed her off to the next group of captors. They were told there's no safe place above ground anymore, and got taken down into a tunnel, where they met six other hostages, two kids, four women, two of whom are young Israeli soldiers.
They had just finished basic training and of course, and they didn't even start doing their job. Kids, they're like 18 and a half, 19-year-olds. Some of them were alone until they got to that tunnel and some more physically injured alone. Yeah. Some of them went through a lot.
There was something really powerful about that week in that tunnel. Even though with all the difficulties and even though they seem to be on edge, we're really there for one another. There was some sort of feminine energy strength in that tunnel. The two kids, Ela and Dafna, were sisters, 8 and 15. Their dad and his partner were killed on October 7th. And the other women had been taken care of them in Gaza.
And they're amazing. They showed so much emotional strength, also towards the children of Nain Elan. And that's something I couldn't handle. To be there for other kids. Yes, I couldn't. But the young women, they were there for them. They were with them even before we arrived, so they were the authority for those girls.
And I was in awe, truly, at how they managed to handle them and be there for them, with their physical injuries and with their emotional injuries, and still try to function, to cook whenever possible, to be there for each other. I remember one day one of them had this like,
panic attack and she started hyperventilating and she started going up the stairs and she said there on the stairs and she was crying her heart out and she was crying and she just like it's like she couldn't breathe and she wanted a moment to herself because all these togetherness can be really intense too and of course we're there for one another we're helping each other but it can just be
It's suffocating too, and you end up craving your privacy in just a moment for yourself and some air and some space. This is where Hainan and her kids spent the week before they finally released. They were told during that week. It's going to be soon.
They kept saying, Friday, oh no, it's going to be Saturday. Oh no, now it's going to be Sunday. I remember thinking to myself, it's not a big deal, like the absurdity of it. It's not a big deal if I stay here one more day. Getting out, I realize I'm going to have to face something very difficult, that I lost Yaman Adav. Yaman Adav, her daughter and husband, of course.
And the day of our release came, it was a very nerve-wracking day. Saying goodbye to the girls was difficult. They were like, who's going to be released next? Is it going to be the civilians first? The soldiers kind of understood that it will take a little longer. I mean, they didn't realize it's going to be that long, but they would never imagine they would still be there. But there were two other women with you, civilians.
Yes, they're wounded, but they're still there. Yes, they're still there.
It was a difficult farewell, also deciding what to say to their parents, not to say to their parents. They asked us to fight for them, asked us not to forget them, to go to protest that we speak to their parents. That we did immediately. They also told us what to say and what not to say. But everything was with the assumption that they would be released right after us. That still hasn't happened, they're still there.
Canada family were released as part of a deal negotiated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, where 80 Israelis, mostly women and children, lots of older people, were swapped for 240 Palestinians, mostly women and children, held in Israeli prisons. Heinz Transur was broadcast on Israeli TV.
And the first stages of it look pretty chaotic, actually. There's a random mass of people crowded on some sidewalk, cars with hostages pull up one after another. Each hostages ushered down this sidewalk past all this confusion to another waiting car. There's frightening, Glenn says.
A while from the Hamas vehicles to the Red Cross vehicles and it's all, we're being filmed, it's all staged and it's like their moment of glory. They're wearing their best uniforms. We never saw these uniforms before.
And I remember asking myself, how did Israel allow this? How could Israel allow our transfer to happen in such a public, exposed place when tons of people were there? Like we were scared. We were so scared until the end. We already survived this. We were already about to get released. And we're still like they had to make it scary for us all the way to the end. Then the Red Cross vehicles take off in a convoy and drive all the way to the border.
And then all of a sudden, like magic, we are being moved to our military. And it was very, very moving.
That moment was the saddest happiness of my life. I knew Nadav wouldn't be there to hug me. I just wanted someone to be there and hug me and tell me, that's it, you're safe now, after everything we've gone through.
Ada, the hostage who'd been an Arabic teacher, also talked to in her interview about that moment right at the end of captivity, when she finally made it out and reached the Israeli military forces. It got to her in a very different way. There was a group of officers there. There was a white shining tent with everything you could wish for.
I walked in and they took me in and I screamed, where were you on the 7th of October? Not that they deserved it because it was not them, but where the hell were the army on the 7th of October? And I started crying and they caught me the moment I was falling down and I'm not one of those fainters.
It was a very difficult moment. I don't know if family were filmed on the helicopter that brought them home, talking to the crew, getting a tour of the cockpit. When says it was hard, getting this very respectful treatment, not to think about how this was the same military that she and her kids have been so scared of in Gaza for so long during the airstrikes. These rescuers were in the same army that might have killed them.
Did you say anything about it? I started talking about when I first came back because when I was in Gaza, I promised myself that I would talk about it, that I would talk about that complexity. But then you come back and they tell you, don't talk about it as much with the media, not with the international media, of course, because it's not a good look.
And you see here how hard it is, like you see people who did a bunch of operations in the military and got to very senior positions and they're not able, it's like they can't, they aren't able to come and just say, we're sorry. We're sorry for what you went through on the 7th when you were inside your shelter. We're sorry that we bombed in Gaza when you were there with your kids.
Mark Lee Moses, the woman you heard earlier who was held in the tunnels the entire time, was released two days before Glenn. She got invited this summer by Prime Minister Netanyahu to meet with him and some other released hostages. Sure, this letter is her reply.
Hello, Mr. Netanyahu. Thank you for the invitation, but I will not participate in a meeting for the sake of photos and public relations, while my friends are rotting in Hamas tunnels in Gaza. With my own eyes, I saw them alive in captivity and now, due to their second abandonment, since October 7, we are receiving them in coffins.
In Lionel reports that you have swatted yet another deal to release the captives. I see no reason to attend a meeting with somebody who has demonstrated through his actions that the release of the captives is not a priority and who is abandoning them to their death.
I would be happy to meet you at the welcoming event for the 109 captives upon their return to their families. Thank you.
My program is produced today by Dana Chivas, Diane Wu, Yael Evan Orr, and me, with editing help from Nancy Updike. Based on interviews from the Israeli podcast, Ichad Biyom, a production of N12. The staff of Ichad Biyom, who produced these interviews are Lee Naim, Sheila Errell, Romateek, Yeir Bashan, and Guy Imbar.
Our Hebrew interpreters were Yael Evan Orr, Amirah Jolson, and Miriam Kaplan. The people who put together our show today include Bim Adalumi, Sean Cole, Michael Comite, Aviva de Cornfeld, Emmanuel Jocey, Hani Hawasli, Hana Jafi Walt, Valerie Kibness, Henry Larson, Seth Lin, Catherine Raymondo, Stone Nelson, Ryan Rumbry,
Alyssa Ship, Aixreece Conderajah, Horace D'Archesky, Lily Sullivan, Christopher Sotara, Marisa Robertson-Texter, Matt Tierney, and Nancy Updike. Our managing editors are up to ramen our senior editors, David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry. Special thanks to Data Noyo Jot, Narya Shawali, Edgar Kelly, and Sam Klein. Also thanks to the rest of the Echad Biom's staff, Elad Simhayov, Adi Khletzrone, Daniel Shahar, and Danny Nuruman.
Our website, thisamericanlife.org. We can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free. This American life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. I'm Aaron Glass, back next week, with more stories of this American life.
