In an interview that aired on February 27, released hostage Eli Sharabi talked about meeting Hersh Goldberg-Polin in Hamas’ tunnels. The two only spent three days of captivity together, along with Eliya Cohen, Or Levy and Alon Ohel, with whom Sharabi was held in captivity, and Ori Danino and Almog Sarusi, whom were killed by Hamas along with Hersh, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov and Carmel Gat when the IDF closed in on them in Gaza back in August of 2024.
Sharabi quoted a line that Hersh told him when they were together that stayed with him during that time. “He who has the why will find the how,” is what Hersh told him, apparently a mantra that not just Sharabi, but also Or Levy, who was held with him in Hamas tunnels for most of their almost 500 days in captivity, kept telling himself, thinking of his young son, Almog, “Mogi,” as that “why” and of his wife, Einav, who he didn’t know had been killed on October 7 at the Supernova festival.
Last week, as the ceasefire broke, Levy did something he decided to do all the way back when he was held in that Gaza tunnel: tattoo Hersh’s words on his flesh, a reminder of the things he had to fight for. Yet talking to Hersh’s parents, Jon and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, he discovered that line didn’t come directly from Hersh, but instead from Nietzsche, who wrote in “Twilight of the Idols” a line that has been translated in many ways. “If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how,” is one such translation. But the way many have discovered it is through the work of Viktor Frankl, the Jewish Austrian philosopher, neurologist and Holocaust survivor, who refers to it in “Man’s Search for Meaning,” writing, “those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.'”
In a recent Instagram post, Levy recalled Hersh telling him that line on his “52nd day of captivity,” and it is one that “accompanied me ever since and to this day, and perhaps thanks to it, I was able to survive this terrible inferno.”
“Already in captivity I knew that when I returned I wanted to get a tattoo with this sentence, so that I would never forget it, and today I finally fulfilled my wish,” Levy wrote along with a picture of the tattoo on his arm.
“When I told the story to Rachel and Jon, Hersh’s amazing parents, I discovered that it was actually a quote from Nietzsche and, in turn, quoted in Viktor Frankl’s book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning.’ Frankl uses the sentence to describe the mental strength required of him to survive the Holocaust. I have tried to avoid comparisons to the Holocaust until now, but the parallels are clear,” he continued.
“Since the fighting resumed, I can’t help but remember that time in captivity,” Levy shared. “The fears, the mental and physical abuses, the constant danger to life that hovered over us and still hovers over the heads of 59 of our brothers and sisters. It is impossible to describe how difficult this ‘how’ is, how much they suffer there, how much their families suffer. There is no more important goal than saving the lives of the hostages who are there. I appeal to all of you — please help us put an end to this terrible suffering.”
Levy was freed from Gaza in early February, as part of the second ceasefire deal. A week later, in sunglasses, against family and medical counsel, he was already at the Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, moved by the work taking place there and fighting for those who he left behind in Gaza, including Alon Ohel, who still remains in Gaza, and Eliya Cohen, who returned to Israel later that month. “I may be here but I still have brothers and sisters who are in Gaza and their time is running out,” he wrote. “Hope dies last. Everyone, now, whatever it takes.”
