An Israeli woman taken hostage by Hamas in Gaza has described the "hell" of being held captive after her husband and daughter were murdered, telling CNN her captors would not allow her surviving young children to cry and tried to convince them they “had been forgotten.”
Chen Almog Goldstein, who was kidnapped with her surviving children during Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel, said they were held in tunnels and an apartment in Gaza until their release after 51 days.
"They humiliated us, sometimes mocking us," she told CNN. "They told us that we had been forgotten, that the only important thing for Israel was fighting."
"We were not allowed to cry, they wanted us to be happy … If we cried, we had to snap out of it or hide it,” she added. “It’s a kind of emotional abuse that they didn’t let us cry."
Almog Goldstein witnessed her husband Nadav and her oldest daughter Yam murdered by Hamas gunmen who broke into their home near the border with Gaza on October 7.
“I took Yam’s large teddy bear, the size of a human, and put it on top of us to protect us from the shooting,” she said. “Within a few seconds, five of them came into the safe room, screaming, (and) as I turned around, Nadav was shot in the chest, point blank.”
Moments later, her daughter was shot in the face, and Almog Goldstein was bundled into a family car along with her three surviving children and driven across the border. She recalled the two Hamas militants in the car taking selfies as they drove back to Gaza.
Hamas’ attacks on October 7 killed around 1,200 Israelis, with more than 200 people taken back to Gaza as hostages. Israel believes that 99 people are still being held in Gaza, along with the bodies of 31 dead hostages.
Read more about Almog Goldstein's story.