BROOKLINE, MASS. (WHDH) - Boston-area community members are mourning the deaths of six hostages killed in Gaza — including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who had ties to New England.
Goldberg-Polin, whose body was found this week in the Gaza city of Rafah, helped integrate a group of New England students to Israel on a tour program in 2017.
“There are not the right words in the English vocabulary to express the shock, pain, the horror in all of this,” said Debbie Kardon, the former Cohen Camps Director of Israel and Leadership.
“To have had someone be in your care for six weeks, and to know them, to appreciate them, to have that connection, it’s unimaginable that any of this could have happened,” Kardon continued.
Friends of Goldberg-Polin’s family live in Brookline and put up a sign with his picture when he was kidnapped Oct. 7.
The sign turned into a makeshift memorial while thousands of mourners attended his funeral in Israel Monday.
“Amidst the inexplicable agony, terror, anguish, desperation, and fear, we became absolutely certain that you were coming home to us alive. But it was not to be. Now I no longer have to worry about you. I know you are no longer in danger,” said his mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, at her son’s funeral.
Taped over her heart, Brookline resident Tamar Davis Galper continues to mark the number of days since her American-born cousin Omer Neutra was taken hostage in Israel on Oct. 7.
“332 days,” Galper said.
“Omer, I hope that he is alive. I pray he is still alive and that he can be returned alive,” she said.
Now after the Israeli military said six hostages were killed just before the Israeli forces were to rescue them, Galper is pleading that all the remaining hostages be released alive, immediately.
“We need everybody to know who these people are — they’re people. People with hopes and dreams, people with families, people who are waiting. It’s hell for them and it’s hell for the families,” Galper said.
On Sunday in Newton, a large group of mourners gathered to honor the recently killed hostages.
Alex Kazantsev lit a candle at the Brookline memorial site Monday and condemned the killings.
“It goes against all my beliefs of what we would be as a civilized society,” Kazantsev said.
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