Seventeen hours and 31 minutes before the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, Jon Polin stood before about 150 people in a second-floor auditorium at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation at the southern end of Jaffa, overlooking the Mediterranean.
One floor below was an exhibition of personal belongings selected by families to represent the people murdered, killed in service or taken hostage on Oct. 7 and the war that followed. Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Polin’s 23-year-old son, was represented by a copy of Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
For close to an hour, Polin spoke in English about Hersh’s 330 days as a hostage, what he and his wife Rachel Goldberg-Polin have learned since their son’s death, what they plan to do next and why he believes Israel still needs answers from the government about its failures that day.
But Polin said he is not motivated by seeking punishment. “I don’t care about anybody, a politician, a military person or anybody else paying a price,” Polin said. “I don’t care if anybody ever ‘pays a price.’ I think we need a Va’adat Hakira Mamlachtit (a State Commission of Inquiry) because we as a nation need to feel like we’ve learned something that will help us prevent such a thing from ever happening again.”
The idea of a national commission has become politicized, he said, and questioned why there is not broader support for one. His interest is in determining what can be learned from the failures that preceded the attacks and the decisions that followed.
Polin also said he doubts Israelis will ever arrive at one uncontested account of what happened. “I will say, unfortunately, I don’t believe we’re ever going to know what the results are, meaning if at some future date there is actually a commission of inquiry. I think things have been so clouded that we’ll never know really what happened,” Polin said.
Hersh was at the Nova music festival when Hamas terrorists attacked on Oct. 7. He and others fled to a roadside bomb shelter, where terrorists threw grenades inside. His friend Aner Shapira was killed; Hersh lost his left (and dominant) arm below the elbow before being taken into Gaza. After 330 days in captivity, Hersh and five other hostages were executed in a tunnel in Rafah. They have since been referred to as “The Beautiful Six.”
Five months after Hersh’s murder, Or Levy – a former hostage who had just been released in an exchange deal – met with Jon and Rachel for three hours. Levy had been taken into Gaza on the same pickup truck as Hersh and later encountered Hersh again while captive in a tunnel. Levy told the Polins that Hersh often repeated Frankl’s most famous quote, “he who has a why can bear almost any how,” and encouraged other hostages to identify their own “why.” For Levy, that was his son, Almog, who was three when his father was abducted by Hamas.
When Levy met with Jon and Rachel after his release, he was still skeletal and malnourished. Levy told them that once he regained his strength, he planned to have the Frankl quote tattooed on his arm. Levy later got the tattoo, and when Almog saw it, Polin said, he asked, “Daddy, Abba, what is that on your arm?” Levy answered, “It’s you.”
Polin voice choked back as he spoke about the unwitting connection his slain son shares with the Holocaust. “A young Jewish man, badly wounded, held underground in Gaza in 2023 and 2024, reaching for the words of another Jew who had survived the death camps and Auschwitz 80 years earlier,” Polin said. “And he used those words to not only comfort himself, but to give strength to others. This we’ve come to learn is what all of the hostages were doing. They were giving strength to each other.”
Polin’s wife Rachel was not at the Peres Center on Tuesday. The bestselling author was in the United States on the book tour for “When We See You Again” with an event in Las Vegas on Oct. 8.
Asked by The Journal what had stood out to him while joining Rachel for parts of the book tour earlier this year, Polin spoke about an encounter with a 12th-grade student at SAR High School, an Orthodox school in New York City. For context, at Hersh’s funeral in September 2024, Polin ended his eulogy with “may your memory be a revolution,” a variation on the Jewish phrase “may your memory be a blessing.” The SAR student asked Polin how that call for revolution fit with Jon and Rachel’s discussions of Maimonides and moderation.
“It gave us clarity because right then on the spot I said, ‘We’ve been trying to figure out exactly what the revolution is, and maybe that’s it,’” Polin told The Journal. “Maybe what the world needs most is a revolution of moderation, and we’re figuring out what to do with that, but it’s a moment that meant a lot to me coming from that boy in New York a few months ago.”
Three years ago, Jon was working in a tech firm and Rachel was teaching North American high school students in Israel. Polin said neither expects to return to those careers. “We’re digesting what has happened to us in the last three years, and I’m not sure that we’ll ever know and have clarity, but it does leave us with a sense of being some sort of messengers.”
Polin described himself and Rachel as “hostage adjacent” and said their experience placed them in a public role they never sought. He mentioned speaking, writing, education programs among other ideas for what comes next. “We’ve got whiteboards filled with ideas, but I don’t see us getting off of this path of needing to do something that feels somehow productive coming out of and while we carry forever our personal tragedy,” Polin said.
Polin shook hands and spoke with attendees after his remarks. Among those present were Philippine Ambassador to Israel Aileen S. Mendiola and Norwegian Ambassador to Israel Per Egil Selvaag. Four Filipino nationals were killed in the Oct. 7 attacks. “We feel the depth of your experience,” Mendiola said to Polin. “Thank you for sharing today.”
Much of Polin’s public life since Oct. 7 has involved trying to bring Hersh home and, after Hersh’s murder, carrying his story forward. With the three-year anniversary less than a day away, Polin reiterated his perspective on the difference between learning what went wrong and seeking revenge. He understands that the death of a captor or an Oct. 7 attacker can bring comfort to some victims’ families and said he would not question anyone who feels that way.
“Rachel and I and many other victims’ families have consistently said taking revenge doesn’t offer any comfort,” Polin said. Instead, he wants an accounting of what happened and a plan to reduce the chance that Israelis face another Oct. 7. “But I’m just saying the only result I’m looking for [in] all of this is let’s wrap up this round of hostility,” Polin said. “Let’s do everything we can to ensure security. Let’s understand what happened and learn from it and reduce the chance of it ever happening again. And that’s all I’m looking for.”
