A Hostage Released From Gaza Campaigns for the Release of Others

More than 15 months have passed since Ilana Gritzewsky was released from Hamas captivity in Gaza. She still does not feel free. Her partner remains a hostage.

He was captured along with Ms. Gritzewsky from their home in an Israeli border village on Oct. 7, 2023, during the Hamas-led attack that ignited the war in Gaza and is among the hostages that Hamas continues to hold, more than 500 days later.

Traumatized from her own violent abduction, Ms. Gritzewsky, 31, has devoted herself to campaigning on behalf of the hostages still in the enclave, including her partner, Matan Zangauker, now 25, and two men she said she last saw in a Hamas tunnel while in captivity.

They were all kidnapped from the same Israeli kibbutz, Nir Oz, near the border with Gaza — among the roughly 250 hostages taken that day. Now, about 24 living hostages are still in Gaza, according to the Israeli government, along with the remains of at least 35 others who were taken on that October day.

Ms. Gritzewsky said that her captors beat her, then molested her, as they drove her to Gaza. Taken alone, she said she passed out along the way and awoke in the enclave surrounded by gunmen, half-naked, terrified and vulnerable.

The hostages’ fate has become ever more precarious, as Israel has returned to fighting in Gaza in a risky bid to pressure Hamas into releasing more captives, amid an impasse in cease-fire talks.

Trepidation over their fate has left Ms. Gritzewsky little time for self-healing.

“I’m not really available for my own rehabilitation, not for the body and not least 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 am out, it’s a sign that God wanted me to raise my voice to help those who are alive gain their freedom and bring back the dead for a proper burial.”

Ms. Gritzewsky’s battle is at the heart of a fraught debate within Israeli society about the country’s priorities. She is backed by a broad section of society that wants to prioritize the hostages’ release at any cost, even if it means allowing Hamas to remain in power in Gaza for now. But others — including powerful ministers in the right-wing government — want to defeat Hamas, even if it delays or prevents a deal to free the remaining hostages.

Mr. Zangauker’s mother, Einav Zangauker, has emerged as a prominent voice in antigovernment protests staged by some of the families of hostages. They have been frustrated by what they view as the Israeli government’s foot-dragging over negotiating the captives’ freedom.

Some former hostages and the families of many current ones have instead pinned their hopes on the Trump administration. Several recently released hostages flew to the United States this month for meetings with President Trump and administration officials. They included Eli Sharabi, who came back emaciated on Feb. 8 to find his wife and two daughters had been killed in the October 2023, attack, and Keith Siegel, an American Israeli, who was accompanied by his wife, Aviva Siegel, who was kidnapped with him and freed in November 2023.

Ms. Gritzewsky recently returned from a month in the United States, where she met with Trump administration officials and Jewish communities, attended the Conservative Political Action Conference and addressed a rally for the hostages in Central Park.

Ms. Gritzewsky immigrated to Israel from Mexico in her teens. After starting a confectionary business, she went to work in a medical cannabis farm in Nir Oz, where she met Mr. Zangauker. They became a couple and moved in together. “We liked the quiet of the kibbutz, with our cup of coffee and cigarette,” she said. “We prefer anonymity.”

When gunmen overran Nir Oz early that October morning, they went from house to house until the assailants reached theirs, Ms. Gritzewsky said. The couple jumped out of the window of their safe room as assailants shot at the door. They ran in different directions and Ms. Gritzewsky lost sight of Mr. Zangauker. Then her nightmare continued. She was quickly captured, beaten and driven to Gaza.

She said she was trapped between two gunmen on a motorcycle, her head and face covered with a large piece of nylon or tarpaulin. A home security camera belonging to a Nir Oz resident, Eyal Barad, captured the moment, showing her with a white fabric wrapped around her head on the motorcycle with the gunmen. Ms. Gritzewsky said that the men pressed her leg onto the exhaust pipe, burning it, and that one of the kidnappers sitting behind her groped her, touching her breast under her shirt, and her legs. She passed out before they crossed the border.

When she came to, she said, she found herself on the floor in a dilapidated building, clearly in Gaza, her shirt up baring her breasts and pants pulled down, with seven gunmen standing over her. She does not know what exactly happened to her while she was passed out, but she said she gestured to them and told them in English that she had her period, believing that probably saved her from worse. “They hit me and lifted me up,” she said.

“I felt they were disappointed,” she said, adding, “I don’t think I have ever been so thankful for my period.”

Over more than 50 days she was moved from place to place, mostly aboveground, at first alone with her captors and then held with other hostages. Though she told her captors she suffered from a chronic digestive disease, she said she was not provided with any medication. She said she was held in private residences, in a hospital and, shortly before her release, in a tunnel.

Ms. Gritzewsky said she was interrogated about her army service. (She completed her military duty a decade ago.) One of her captors hugged her and told her, while pointing his pistol at her, that even if there was a deal, she would not be released because he wanted to marry her and have her children, she said. She said one told her he was a mathematics teacher, and another, a lawyer. She said they stole her earrings and a bracelet.

She understood that Mr. Zangauker had also been kidnapped to Gaza — when she described his long hair to one of her captors, the captor appeared to confirm that he was a hostage, referring to him as being from Ofakim, the Zangaukers’ hometown — but she never saw him in captivity.

Ms. Gritzewsky was released on Nov. 30, 2023, during a weeklong cease-fire when many of the other women and children were freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. On her return, she discovered she had a broken hip. Avigail Poleg-Dvir, Ms. Gritzewsky’s therapist since her release, said Ms. Gritzewsky had shared with her the main details of her abduction and captivity: the violence when she was taken, the motorcycle ride, the assault, waking up half-naked on the ground and the intimidation she faced in captivity. Ms. Gritzewsky said she also related the details to Israeli police investigators.

A United Nations report released last year found signs that participants in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel committed sexual violence in multiple locations and said that some hostages held in Gaza had been subjected to rape and sexual torture. A U.N. commission also accused Israel of sexual- and gender-based violence during its campaign in Gaza, including torture, abuse and sexual humiliation.

In December 2024, Hamas released a video of Mr. Zangauker in captivity, in which he begged Israel’s leaders to make a deal that would bring him and the other hostages home.

Rights groups and international law experts say that a hostage video is, by definition, made under duress, and that the statements in it are usually coerced. Israeli officials have called past Hamas videos a form of “psychological warfare,” and experts say their production can constitute a war crime.

But to Ms. Gritzewsky, the video provided proof that her partner was still alive.

“It wasn’t my Matan,” she said. “He was thin, with frightened eyes, screaming from within to be saved. It broke me, but it also gave me hope,” she said. “He survived.”