‘When We See You Again’: Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s Moving Tribute to Hersh Will Be Released in April

Random House, an imprint of Penguin Random House, announced that When We See You Again will be released on April 21. Goldberg-Polin will also narrate the audiobook edition.

By Shula Rosen

Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose public campaign for the release of her son became a symbol of the hostage crisis following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, will publish a memoir this spring chronicling the months of captivity, advocacy, and loss that reshaped her family’s life.

Random House, an imprint of Penguin Random House, announced that When We See You Again will be released on April 21. Goldberg-Polin will also narrate the audiobook edition.

“I sat down to write my pain, and out poured loss, suffering, love, mourning, devotion, grief, adoration and fracturedness,” Goldberg-Polin said in a statement. “This book recounts the first steps of a million-mile odyssey that will take the rest of my life to walk on shattered feet.”

Her son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, was abducted from the Nova music festival in southern Israel when Hamas terrorists carried out a mass assault on border communities.

He was taken into Gaza along with dozens of others. In the months that followed, Goldberg-Polin and her husband, Jon Polin, traveled internationally to press for the release of the hostages, meeting with President Joe Biden and Pope Francis, addressing the United Nations, and appearing at rallies and public events.

Each day, she marked the number of days Hersh had been held by writing it on masking tape and placing it on her clothing.

The couple continued their efforts after Israeli officials announced in September 2024 that the bodies of Hersh and five other hostages had been recovered from a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip. Israeli forensic experts said the captives had been shot at close range. Tens of thousands attended Hersh’s funeral in Jerusalem.

According to the publisher, the memoir is written in “raw, unflinching, deeply moving prose” and traces Goldberg-Polin’s experience from the morning of the attack through months of uncertainty, grief and public advocacy.

In an excerpt, she reflects on the emotional toll of loss: “There are days when I break completely. I have cried for an entire day straight. I didn’t think it was physically possible, but the weeping never let up. I kept hoping I would run out of tears. And then there are days when there is a whisper of sun. Not out there in the sky. In me. In us.”