Freed hostage Maxim Herkin reveals why his mother stayed silent throughout his 738 days in Hamas captivity

Former hostage Maxim Herkin has revealed that his mother made the agonising decision to keep his name largely out of the public eye throughout his 738 days in Hamas captivity because she believed speaking out could have cost him his life.

Speaking at a sold-out event at JW3 in London last week, in conversation with Danyelle Neuman, Chief Development Officer at the Jewish Agency for Israel, Herkin said he was the only living Israel Defence Forces (IDF) reserve officer taken hostage on 7 October 2023. Fearing Hamas would discover his military role, his family chose not to campaign publicly in the way many other hostage families did.

Herkin explained that, moments before he was captured at the Nova music festival, he threw away documents identifying him as an IDF officer, hoping they would instead help investigators establish what had happened to him if he was killed.

Two weeks later, after he had been listed as missing, those documents were shown to his mother, who immediately understood the message he had been trying to leave.

Neuman told the audience that Herkin’s mother had received criticism from other hostage families because she had not publicly campaigned for his release.

“My mother got a lot of criticism from the other hostage parents, because she wasn’t speaking up loudly, and she wasn’t one of these people putting his picture everywhere,” she said, explaining the family’s strategy.

“She was so afraid that anything she said that would contradict his story would result in his death.”

Herkin added: “It was that silence that worked.”

During the evening, Herkin gave a deeply personal account of the attack that changed his life. He had travelled to the Nova music festival with friends, expecting to begin another period of reserve military service the following day.

When rocket sirens sounded shortly after 6am, he initially believed it was another familiar escalation with Gaza. But after receiving a frantic phone call from friends whose car had come under fire, he turned back to help them.

Soon afterwards, he found himself trapped as Hamas gunmen surrounded festivalgoers from multiple directions.

Describing the moments before his capture, Herkin said the attackers moved methodically through people hiding beside the road.

“They took their time. They enjoyed it,” he recalled. “They let people cry and beg for their lives.”

He was eventually beaten, handcuffed and taken into Gaza, where his captivity began.

Herkin said he spent the first eight months being moved between homes belonging to Gazan families before later being transferred underground into Hamas tunnels, where he remained for more than a year.

One of the most significant moments of his captivity came after he secretly repaired a damaged radio.

Unable to receive FM broadcasts from deep underground, Herkin improvised a way of picking up AM radio signals by connecting the set to an electricity supply feeding the tunnels. The discovery gave the hostages their first reliable source of information from the outside world.

Until then, he said, their captors had repeatedly insisted that Israelis had forgotten them.

Instead, the broadcasters revealed hundreds of thousands of people were continuing to march and campaign for the hostages’ release.

“Everything you did, I felt it,” Herkin told the audience.

“It got us out of there. It got me home to my family, and just a huge thank you to all of you for everything you did.”

He also spoke about the severe physical toll, revealing he lost around 40 kilograms while being held hostage. During the final five months, he said, he survived on around 350 calories a day.

Now rebuilding his life, Herkin said reconnecting with his young daughter had become one of his biggest challenges.

“We have to build our relationship over from zero,” he said. “It’s really hard for me, really hard for her. But we were given the same gift.”

Asked what had helped him survive almost two years in captivity, Herkin pointed to his faith, the support shown by Jews around the world and the determination not to give up while others continued fighting for his freedom.

He ended the evening by reflecting on how the experience had transformed his outlook on life.

“Don’t assume people know that you love them – tell them you love them,” he said.

“Anything you want to do, do it today, because it could be that there is no tomorrow.”

He added: “Time is our true currency. So use it wisely. Do not waste it.”