More than 15 months have passed since Ilana Gritzewsky was released from the captivity of Hamas in Gaza. She still doesn’t feel free. His partner remains a hostage.
He was captured with Ms. Gritzewsky of their home in an Israeli border village on October 7, 2023, during the attack led by Hamas which sparked the war in Gaza and is one of the hostages that Hamas continues to hold, more than 500 days later.
Traumatized by her own violent kidnapping, Ms. Gritzewsky, 31, devoted herself to campaigning on behalf of the hostages still in the enclave, including her partner, Matan Zangauker, now 25 years old, and two men whom she said that she had last saw in a Hamas Tunnel in captivity.
They were all kidnapped by the same Israeli Kibbutz, Nir Oz, near the border with Gaza – among the 250 hostages taken that day. Today, around 24 living hostages are still in Gaza, according to the Israeli government, as well as the remains of at least 35 other people who were taken today in October.
Ms. Gritzewsky said her kidnappers beat her, then assaulted her, when they led her to Gaza. Taken alone, she said that she passed out along the way and woke up in the enclave surrounded by armed man, half naked, terrified and vulnerable.
The fate of hostages has become more and more precarious, because Israel returned to fight in Gaza in a risky attempt to put pressure on Hamas to release more captives, in the middle of a dead end in the cease-fire talks.
The supply of their fate left Ms. Gritzewsky little time for the self-healing.
“I am not really available for my own rehabilitation, not for the body and especially for the soul,” she said.
“I live with the question of why me and not them. I have no answer, “she said, adding,” but if I came out, it is a sign that God wanted me to lift my voice to help those who are alive to win their freedom and bring the dead for an appropriate burial. “
The battle of Ms. Gritzewsky is at the heart of a difficult debate in Israeli society on the country’s priorities. It is supported by a large part of society which wishes to prioritize the release of hostages at all costs, even if it means allowing Hamas to stay in power in Gaza for the moment. But others – including powerful ministers from the right -wing government – want to defeat Hamas, even if it delays or prevents an agreement to release the remaining hostages.
Mr. Zangauker’s mother, Einav Zangauker, has become an important voice in antigenmental demonstrations organized by certain hostage families. They were frustrated by what they consider as the Israeli government’s foot on the negotiation of the freedom of captives.
Some former hostages and the families of many currents rather pinned their hopes on the Trump administration. Several hostages recently published have stolen in the United States this month for meetings with President Trump and administration officials. They understood Eli Sharabi, who returned emaciated on February 8 to find that his wife and two daughters had been killed in October 2023, Attack, and Keith Siegel, an American Israeli, who was accompanied by his wife, Aviva Siegel, who was kidnapped with him and released in November 2023.
Gritzewsky recently returned to the United States recently, where she met officials of the Trump administration and the Jewish communities, attended the conservative political action conference and addressed a rally for the hostages of Central Park.
Ms. Gritzewsky immigrated to Mexico Israel in her adolescence. After starting a confectionery company, she went to work on a medical cannabis farm in Nir Oz, where she met Mr. Zangauker. They became a couple and moved together. “We liked the calm of Kibbutz, with our cup of coffee and cigarettes,” she said. “We prefer anonymity.”
When armed men invaded Nir Oz early this morning in October, they went from home to house until the attackers reach their own, said Gritzewsky. The couple jumped out the window of their security room while the attackers pulled the door. They ran in different directions and Ms. Gritzewsky lost sight of Mr. Zangauker. Then his nightmare continued. She was quickly captured, beaten and driving in Gaza.
She said that she was trapped between two armed men on a motorcycle, her head and face covered with a large piece of nylon or tarpaulin. A home security camera belonging to a resident of Nir Oz, Eyal Barad, captured the moment, showing her with a white fabric wrapped around her head on the motorcycle with the armed men. Ms. Gritzewsky said that the men were rushing at the exhaust pipe, the burning, and that one of the kidnappers was sitting behind her to grop, touching her chest under her shirt and legs. She passed out before crossing the border.
When she arrived, she said, she found herself on the floor in a dilapidated building, clearly in Gaza, her shirt passing the breasts and the pants fired down, with seven armed men standing above her. She does not know exactly what happened to her while she was passed out, but she said that she was signaling to them and told them in English that she had her period, believing that it probably saved her from worse. “They hit me and raised me,” she said.
“I felt they were disappointed,” she said, adding, “I don’t think I have been so grateful to my period.”
During more than 50 days, it was moved from one place to another, mainly above the ground, first alone with its captors, then held with other hostages. Although she told her kidnappers that she suffered from a chronic digestive disease, she said that she had not received a medication. She said that she was owned in private residences, in a hospital and, shortly before her release, in a tunnel.
Ms. Gritzewsky said she had been questioned about her army service. (She finished her military duties a decade ago.) One of her kidnappers hugged her and said, while pointing her pistol to her, that even if there was an agreement, she would not be released because he wanted to marry her and have her children, she said. She said that one had told him that he was a professor of mathematics and another, a lawyer. She said they had stolen her earrings and a bracelet.
She understood that Mr. Zangauker had also been kidnapped in Gaza – when she described her long hair to one of her kidnappers, the captor seemed to confirm that he was a hostage, referring to him as being of Ofakim, the hometown of Zangaukers – but she never saw him in captivity.
Ms. Gritzewsky was released on November 30, 2023, during a week-long ceasefire when many other women and children were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. On her return, she discovered that she had a broken hip. Avigail Poleg-dvir, Ms. Gritzewsky’s therapist since her release, said that Ms. Gritzewsky had shared with her the main details of her kidnapping and her captivity: violence when she was taken, the motorcycle stroll, the assault, wake up half naked on the ground and the intimidation it has faced in captivity. Gritzewsky said that she had also linked details to Israeli police investigators. Hamas has not responded to a request for comments.
A United Nations reports published last year revealed that participants in the attack on October 7 against Israel had committed sexual violence in several places and said that certain hostages held in Gaza had been subjected to rape and sexual torture. A United Nations commission also accused Israel of sexual and sexual violence during its campaign in Gaza, including torture, abuse and sexual humiliation.
In December 2024, Hamas published a video of Mr. Zangauker in captivity, in which it begged the leaders of Israel to conclude an agreement which would bring him as well as the other hostages.
Rights groups And experts in international law say that a hostage video is, by definition, made under stress, and that the declarations which are generally forced to do so. Israeli officials have described the past videos of Hamas a form of “psychological war”, and experts say that their production can constitute a war crime.
But for Ms. Gritzewsky, the video provided the proof that her partner was still alive.
“It was not my matan,” she said. “It was slim, with frightened eyes, shouting from the inside to be saved. It broke, but it also gave me hope,” she said. “He survived.”
