"We received our loved ones in bags": The journey of the families of fallen hostages

An extraordinary journey took place last week in the mountains of Romania. 18 women set out from Israel, all of them first-degree relatives — spouses, mothers, daughters, and sisters — of fallen hostages who were returned from captivity in Gaza. The women were joined by professionals who accompanied them in the processes of coping and processing the loss during the journey, which was initiated and organized by the "255" association — the organization of hostages and their families — and the Journey 4Hope association.

Two of the participants in the journey are Adi Goldin (68), a member of Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, whose son, Staff Sergeant Oren Goldin (33), fell in the battle defending the kibbutz and his body was kidnapped to Gaza. In November 2024, his body was returned to Israel in an IDF raid in Khan Yunis; and Mushit Mansour (50), daughter of Shlomo Mansour (85), who was kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Kissufim and was the oldest hostage in captivity. His body was returned from Gaza in February 2025.

An amazing connection

"Right now we are at the top of the mountain after a cable car ride," Goldin said. "The view, the nature, and the company here are really liberating, and it gives a good feeling of calm."

"If there is something we have lacked in the last three years, it is breathing," added Mansour. "This is a moment where we reconnect with breathing, to remember and remind ourselves that we must not, literally, stop breathing. Here, on the mountain top, we take a moment of air into our lungs and try to release all the pains and barriers that we have been carrying on our backs in recent years. We have gone through a very turbulent period, with a lot of struggles — internal and external. We left ourselves, our families, society, and all the life we knew before October 7th aside. Later we realized that there is nothing more important than bringing our families, our loved ones, and the values of our country home."

"After this stage of struggles comes the current struggle, which is no less difficult — the struggle to somehow return to sanity. This means rebuilding ourselves, our families, and all the circles that the state does not even recognize. Now we are on a journey in Romania, but our soul is still inside this struggle. I have a 9-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy, and a partner from whom we parted ways during this period. There is a need to rebuild a family that you left, simply because there were more important things then."

"Who held us throughout this whole period is the people, who mobilized for volunteering from all directions," says Goldin. "The people did the government's job. My son left behind a wife and two-year-old twins. When he was killed in battle, his wife fought over the handle of the safe room with terrorists who threw a grenade into their house. After 48 hours of hell, we were all evacuated to a hotel in Eilat. I do not wish for any person to experience the situation where you are informed in a hotel that your son was killed. Mourning in a hotel is an inconceivable situation."

According to her, "today about 90% of the kibbutz members have already returned home, but I am still not sure that I took the right step when I returned to this hell. My house is located three and a half kilometers from the Strip, and I can see Khan Yunis and Rafah from the house window. My own soul has not yet returned to itself and has not yet been treated. I am not in psychological therapy. I saw my role as a tent peg — the one that must remain stuck firmly in the ground. Now, on the journey in Romania, I am starting to breathe a little."

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Shedding the thorns

Mansour and Goldin have criticism of the way the families of the fallen hostages were treated by the establishment. "I think there are many factors that want to make this community of ours forgotten," claims Mansour. "In order to promote the idea of 'absolute victory', they try to make the events of October 7th forgotten. The presence of the fallen hostages is a mirror that reminds everyone how there is no victory here at all. It is just one big loss, which one must find how to rise from."

"All this time that has passed, in which they did not return the hostages, is a weak point of the entire Israeli society. The real campaign is now ours, as a society — how we manage to rehabilitate. The challenge is for everyone to continue to see each other. Not the rifts, which they take care to remind us how different we are, but how — despite the difference — there are great identities between us. After we learned to put thorns on ourselves, the goal is that we will know how to shed them slowly, and see each other's hearts."

"This is the first time I am going on a journey with people who went through exactly what I went through on October 7th — the long hours in the safe room, the nightly evacuations to hotels, and the terrible lack of knowledge regarding what happened to our loved ones," says Goldin. "We are literally one big family."

Regarding their lives today, Mansour says: "My mother recently marked the age of 80, and it is strange that at such an age she needs to continue to be a nomad. On October 7th she was evacuated, later she moved to caravans in Omer and now she has returned to Kissufim, to a caravan. The state decided that everything is safe, but this is not home. We hear the sounds of fighting from the Strip, and every noise brings us back to October 7th. We received our loved ones in bags. We received bodies, not our loved ones alive. The state still does not recognize us as victims of hostilities, even though we carry a lot of circles of injury."

"I learned that no one is like the other," Goldin concludes. "Each one carries the pain in a different way. About myself, I learned that I can be strong. I broadcast laughter, acceptance, and love, and try to help people, but I always remember that I myself have not yet been treated. I still do not really digest and understand the loss, and on this I still need to work."