The mother of Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski, Tami, gave the following interview to Crystal Glyniadaki, which was published on 26.6.2025 in Athens Voice, entitled "Rom Braslavski: Hostage, 21 years old", in which she describes the moments of agony she has been experiencing for 630 days.
On 30.5.25, Tami Braslavsky visited Athens and spoke at the Athens Synagogue about the events of October 7, moving those present.
Athens Voice, Krystalli Glyniadaki 26.6.2025
Behind Tami Braslavsky, the Attica sea shimmers in Faliro. We are in the heart of the Athenian Riviera, on a hotel terrace where many tourists would like to spend their summer holidays. Tami has her back turned to the water and the horizon. For two hours now, she has been looking at me and talking to me, although she is clearly exhausted from the constant movement and medication, with persistence and stability.
"It's my first time in Greece, people tell me: take some pictures. I can't. I'm still in Israel, I'm in Gaza. I've traveled all over the world to talk about Roma: I've been to so many places for the first time and I haven't seen anything. I drive to the hotel from the airport, I do what I have to do, I don't go out, and I come back. And when I come back I don't work, I can't bear to do anything, I don't eat, I don't sleep unless I take medicine."
Tami came to Greece on her own initiative to speak to the Israeli Community of Athens about her son, to inform, to pressure in any way she can, whoever can, to help in his release. Rom Braslavsky has been a prisoner of the Palestinian Jihad in Gaza since October 7, 2023, when he was kidnapped from the Nova festival, where he had unarmed guard duties as a security guard. He immediately understood what was happening and with his efforts and composure he saved the lives of many people.
"We have a WhatsApp group, the families of the hostages who are still alive and we are wondering, planning what we can do. Because so far nothing we have done has brought them back."
How do you think you can put more pressure on your country's government?
I don't think the problem with the return of the hostages is our government. The problem is Hamas and the Palestinian Jihad. And the leaders of the rest of the world who are not putting enough pressure on them. Rohm, in addition to being Israeli, is also a German citizen and the German government has not pushed for his release at all. Neither Macron nor Starmer are pushing. They only talk about the people in Gaza. They are doing well, but you have to remind the world every time that there are innocent hostages still there. The director of the International Red Cross gave an interview to Israeli channels recently and sounded the alarm about Gaza, about the lack of food and water and medicine, and for a moment he didn't say anything about the hostages. Only when asked about it, at the end, did he answer: "It's very disappointing that Hamas won't let us see them." This, nothing else.
What do I mean? The whole world is watching what's happening in Gaza, the whole world is sending aid. But no one is talking about my son, my son and the other hostages. And no one knows anything about them, whether they're okay or not, what their physical condition is, their mental condition. Nothing. Even in Israel! They say on the news that there are so many hostages still in Gaza and then they change the subject and talk about cinema and cooking and education and summer and the parties that are coming... And my god, my son is still there, 600+ days now, the world has completely forgotten about them.
Tami tells us that Rom called her at 10 a.m. on the morning of October 7, from someone else's cell phone, to reassure her, lying to her that the army and police had arrived and that everything was going well, that he was calling her from a soldier's cell phone, that rescuers had arrived with water and special tents, and that in a few hours he would be returning home on a bus sent by the authorities.
In fact, no one had come.
Rom was kidnapped between 2 and 4pm on October 7, after hours of trying to rescue people and the dead from the hands of Hamas and Palestinian Jihad gunmen. The scenes that were supposed to be full of water and rescuers were actually full of bodies and the wounded – Tami saw the videos and photos later. In them there is a policeman all over, a rescuer all over.
20 minutes before Rom speaks to his mother on the phone, we see him on video directing a thirsty person to a place where there are bottles of water. This is the person who sent the video to Rom's mother. Half an hour later, on the other side of the festival, terrorists appeared on motorbikes and began to spread death (for the umpteenth time since 6.29 am). 1/5 of the people shown in the video were murdered on the spot. The person who sent the video to Tami explained to her that they and Rom hid in the fields, among the tall grass, to hide from the terrorists who surrounded them from everywhere. It was his own phone that Rom used to call his mother at 10 am and "reassure" her that he was getting good service from a soldier's phone. After the phone call, all they could hear around them were gunshots, explosions. People were dying all around them and they didn't dare raise their heads.
The period following October 7th in Israel was a real chaos: no one knew anything. It took 10-12 days for Tami to learn that Rom was alive and that he had been kidnapped and taken to Gaza. He saw new bodies arriving at the morgue every day, from the kibbutzim and from the Nova festival, and after a few days the bodies were unrecognizable: just a limb or bones. Other dead were identified only by their ashes or the blood that was left. When he finally learned that Rom had not died and that he was a hostage, he felt as if he had won the lottery, he says, strange as it may seem.
I ask her to tell me a little about her son, what kind of person he was, how she found out about his movements at the festival.
"Ever since Rom was little, he had the heart of a leader. He drew people in, people listened to him. Very recently, an old classmate of his, a year younger, told me: 'I wanted to tell you this and not write it publicly because I'm embarrassed, but I have to tell you. At school, no one talked to me, no one wanted to sit down to eat with me, I was bullied at recess. I was all alone. Rom found out, he was the senior class president, he didn't know me, and one morning he came and hugged me and said, 'Don't worry, I hear what the others are saying about you, but here I am, you're not alone. I'll be with you at every recess, we'll eat together, we'll play soccer together. You'll be with me and my friends and it'll pass.'" And that's what happened, until the others started talking to me too. "He didn't understand how important what he was doing was, but it changed my life. I wanted to die and Rom calmed my soul. And this is just one of the stories that people I don't know come and tell me."
“Another girl told me a story from a vacation they had taken in Eilat. They had booked, she said, a villa together, and they woke up one morning and saw a homeless man on the couch. They didn’t know what to do. Rom woke up from the commotion and told them that he had met the man the night before, on his walk, and since he had nowhere to stay, Rom invited him to stay with them. All these stories show me how caring Rom was. At the Nova festival, people were running to escape the hell, calling their parents, begging God, shouting for the police, the army, someone to save them. And there was Rom, without weapons, with only his hands and feet and his mind, and he truly believed that he could save lives—and he did. The attack began at 6.29 in the morning and Rom was taken hostage between 2 and 4 in the afternoon and until then he was running from place to place to talk to them, to help them."
Isn't it inconceivable that so many hours passed before the army and police arrived to help?
I don't know, we don't know. Where were the helicopters? I don't know. The event was on the news! Everyone knew what was happening.
What do you think happened?
I don't know... I don't know... There are those who say that Netanyahu gave the order for the army and the air force to go and the army didn't respond.
On 2 April 2025, an internal investigation by the Israeli army revealed a series of operational failures: first, despite indications of a possible rocket attack in the coming days from Gaza, the army improperly gave permission for the festival to proceed; second, it did not inform the soldiers of the local division patrolling the border with the Palestinian territory about the festival, nor did it send security observers, as is customary. Furthermore, army officials did not prioritize sending forces to the festival because the police had reported - apparently incorrectly - that the area had been "cleared": the army finally arrived only in the middle of the afternoon. There was also confusion about the invaders: some were wearing military uniforms, others were not. Hamas itself claimed, in October 2023, that its soldiers did not attack the Nova festival, only the soldiers of the Gaza division, and that other groups - the Al-Qassam Brigades, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad - as well as ordinary Gazan citizens, entered Israel, killed and helped abduct the hostages.
Yes, but there are also those who say there was no order.
"I don't know what to tell you, really. What I know is what my son did, who I believe saw and heard everything: he saw the terrorists, he heard the screams, he saw the rapes. Three girls told me that Rom gave them something sweet to drink and eat. At first I didn't believe them because I thought, 'How can they run for their lives and have time to eat?' But they insisted that he calmed them down, that he made them laugh. Then I thought: 'They must be confusing him with someone else.' But then I had evidence, because a jeep with soldiers who went to the rave without having received orders, met Rom and told him to get into the jeep to get him out of there, and he refused. He didn't want to leave at all, he wanted to help. He only asked them to give him whatever food and drink they had in their backpacks. They also had chocolates and they gave them to them. And now I understand that these chocolates were eaten by the three girls.
They also told me that they all went to sit together, under a clump of trees, with about fifty other people, and Rom stayed in front of them, visible, to protect them. Someone took a picture of him, standing there in front with another man, Mark, who went to thank him. It is the last picture I have of him.
Another girl who was in Nova, Nama, told me that, along with thirty other people, they entered large garbage cans or hid behind them to escape. And at some point, a murderer realized that there were people inside and, with a machine gun, cleared them all out. Only Nama and two of her friends escaped, hiding under the bodies of others, with injuries to their lungs and legs. "I called my mother," she told me, "to tell her that I love her and that I won't make it and that I'm sorry that I won't make it." And as she hung up the phone, accepting the fact that she was going to die, she heard a voice: "Is anyone here? Is anyone alive?" It was Rom. He pulled her out of the can and took her to this clump of trees, with the others. It was 12 noon. "Nama says he promised to accompany her to the hospital. She fainted, and when she got back in the ambulance to Soroka Hospital, she asked about him and was told he refused to come back with them."
And all these people came to talk to you and tell you about your son?
"Yes, a lot of them. What I'm telling you are just a few examples. They met Rom for ten minutes, an hour, forty minutes, whatever. But they remember him. Because—and I don't know why—Rom told them about himself: "My name is Rom, I live in Pisgat Ze'ev," etc. Maybe to make them feel normal. But that's how they got to know him, that's how they found me. He made them laugh, to calm them down, that's what they call me. Just like he called me to calm me down too. And not only that. Rom was with another guard, Moshe, and out of nowhere someone comes and tells them that there are two girls lying in the field and they need to go help. Rom didn't hesitate a moment, he took three others, including Moshe, and they went. And as soon as they came out into the open, shots started falling and the four of them started running towards the girls—Moshe told me all this—and he doesn't even know how they found them, but they found them, and Rom picked one up and she died in his arms, looking at him.
Rom didn’t let go of her, he took her and retreated and hid her behind a bush. And then he went back to save the other girl. No one went with him. Moshe survived and wasn’t kidnapped—and he told me all this, and we went and he showed us exactly where they were waiting and hiding—because he didn’t come back with Rom for the second girl. Sasha Trufanov confirmed the story to me when he returned from captivity in Gaza in February 2025, and he brought me news of Rom for the first time since October 7. Rom told Sasha the story that Moshe told Tami: about the two girls in the field, how they didn’t even understand how they managed to find them, how one of them died in his arms, how he was kidnapped while trying to save the other one.”
Sasha Trufanov had also been a prisoner of the Palestinian Jihad since October 7, 2023. The Russian-Israeli was released by the jihadists after pressure from Russian President Vladimir Putin to be included in the first group of swapped prisoners under the January 2025 ceasefire agreement. His visit to Tami marked the first time she had heard from her son since October 2023. Two months later, the Palestinian Jihad filmed Rom sending a message to Israel and his family from captivity and posted it on Telegram. Tami gave permission for the video to be published in April 2025.
ΤWhat else did Sasha Trufanov tell you about Gaza?
"He told me that the Palestinian Jihad was holding them in isolation, in separate houses, with no contact with the outside world. He told me that they met for three days, when they were taking Sasha to the room where Rom was being held, a room with only a mattress, no light, the only window covered with boards. The first thing I wanted to know was not if he was injured, but if he still had his wits about him: if he knew who he was, where he was from. People who stay all alone for a long time, without talking or seeing anyone, can go crazy. Sasha answered positively. And he also told me that Rom had become very close to God, that he prayed often. And in a way I was happy because faith is hope. It is what keeps me going too."
We saw the video that Palestinian Jihad sent with Rom.
"Yes, he talks for about 6,5 minutes and says 'I'm sick, I'm sick all the time, the next time I get sick again they won't take me to the hospital, they'll throw me in a hole in the ground and leave me to die.' What I understand from this video is that my son has been to the hospital several times already – and I'm worried, because Rom has asthma and psoriasis, which he doesn't know how to deal with without his medication if they have a huge crisis, he never had to let them go unchecked when he was at home. Someone who doesn't know him might not understand, but I know him, I see that he's in pain. I see that he's in agony. I understand what he's saying behind his words."
What do you mean? Did you understand if some of what he was telling him was perhaps dictated by his captors?
"In some of his sentences I heard the jihadists, in other sentences I heard Rom, the slang he always used. I think, let's say, that the jihadists had told him that they would release Idan Alexander before it was known that they would release him. And I think they told him something along the lines of 'he will leave because Trump is fighting for him, while nobody wants you. Israel doesn't want you, your family doesn't want you.' I bet they told him that because in the video he is furious: 'Who is this Idan Alexander?' he shouts in the video to our government. "Why is he being released and not me? He is not more important than me, we are equal. We have the same value. Where are you Trump, who said you would get us all out of here? Where are you Bibi Netanyahu, what are you doing to get us back?" That's what my child says."
What did the government tell you after this video?
"Nothing. Nothing! They didn't even bother to pick up the phone and call me. I found out about the video through Telegram channels, and they didn't even call me after we had published the video as a family on the official channels."
And the German Government?
"They tell me what Israel tells me: we are doing everything we can. But I don't see them sitting at the negotiating table. Only the Americans are there. The response of the German government, both the previous and the current one, is: 'we are doing everything we can, we can't get involved anymore because it wouldn't be fair to the other hostages.' But I see that the US managed to free Idan Alexander. And Russia managed to free Sasha Trufanov."
Forgive me for insisting, but here we have two irrefutable proofs that someone is not doing their job well: first, during the Nova festival, when the army did not show up, when they should have. And second, the fact that the government did not bother to call you even once when it was learned that a video of your son from Gaza was being released, nor after you released it. But when I asked you why they are not doing anything else to bring the hostages back, you told me that the Israeli government is doing everything it can.
"I am disappointed with the government, I am. If you had told me before to bring back the hostages and get out of Gaza, I would have said no, I thought we should first kill the leaders of Hamas and all of them so that they could not attack us again. But now, a year and eight months later, now that we have killed their leadership, now that our own government says that 80% of Hamas fighters have been eliminated and that they no longer have weapons to attack us, why don't we leave Gaza? Why?
I myself asked Bibi Netanyahu, one on one, last Passover. And do you know what he told me? We will not leave. "Because if we leave without Hamas having surrendered, they will regroup. And Hamas does not want to surrender." I asked him why he does not care about the 24 hostages who are still alive (at that time), about the soldiers who are being physically and mentally injured or killed. The whole country is bleeding, I told him. I told him that he is sending 18-year-old, 19-year-old children to war who have just graduated from military training and do not really know how to use weapons. Why does he not agree to a ceasefire, to take back all the hostages, to get the soldiers out of there, to rebuild our lives and our society, all together? Why did he make an agreement in Lebanon? He didn't completely wipe out Hezbollah, but he made a deal. "No," he insisted. "They have to surrender. That's the only way." What selfishness...
And I told him: you are not paying the price, Mr. Prime Minister. If your own son were a hostage, you would not do what you are doing, you would feel the pain throughout your body, you would not think with your head and your ego, you would think with your heart. I asked him to think with his heart. He told me that soldiers cannot fight for nothing, they must fight for victory. But it is a victory to bring them back! I told him. I have gone to the soldiers, I have spoken to them before they left for Gaza. And they tell me, with tears in their eyes, "we want to bring the hostages back." That is what they want."
The Witkoff plan
A few days before our interview on June 2, the Israeli government called up 50 more reservists, bringing the total to 450. Tami Braslavsky reiterates her belief that Netanyahu simply doesn't want to end the war. I ask her about the Witkoff plan, which calls for a 60-day ceasefire, the return of 10 alive (and 18 dead) hostages on the first and 11th days, and the immediate flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, via the UN and the Red Cross. The Israeli government accepted it, Hamas initially rejected it, seeking instead a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. What is her opinion?
It's a bad plan, he says.
Why
"Because it's a plan that makes a choice between the remaining living hostages: who will be released and who will not. It's like we're playing Russian roulette. It reminds me of the Nazi selekzia in the camps: who can work? On the right, for work. Who can't? On the left, in the gas chambers. A random, fatal process. Who decides who gets released? Who decides who stays behind? We had a ceasefire for two months, those who came out, came out. Then they stopped talking about the hostages. As if they were telling us: "after two months, maybe we'll decide to continue the ceasefire, maybe we'll start the war again." So, relaxed. 20 people have all been left alive in there! In a bad state, physically and mentally, we saw it from those who returned. They couldn't stand up. I saw my son in the video: that wasn't my son. My son is a thin child; in the video he's bloated, deformed, his face as wide as the moon. They might be giving him cortisone, I don't know? I told Bibi Netanyahu: either you'll make a deal for all the living hostages or you won't make a deal, unless all the living are released."
But maybe Rom will be one of those few who will be freed.
"Even so. It's not right. It's not moral. Why should one be released and not the other? They're all like my children. You know, at the end of the video, Rom talks about the children of Gaza. Children eight, nine years old, he says. A one-day-old baby, dead, wrapped in plastic and thrown away. The children are hungry, he says, they're suffering. He begs our prime minister to end the war. "Without an agreement, I'm not getting out of here alive," he says. So he may have been told to say these things about the children of Gaza, but I, who know him and listened to him, understood that he really meant them. Rom sees the inside of people, not their religion, nor their politics. So I believe that they let him see the destruction and death in Gaza. Along with everything he had seen at the festival: the murders, the rapes, people being burned alive.
But I also know in my heart that he knows that Hamas and its collaborators are responsible for all this. What do you expect Israel to do if you fire rockets from schools and hospitals? They are shouting "Freedom to Palestine" — and they should be shouting "Freedom to Palestine from Hamas." The hostages are innocent people, they didn't hurt anyone. And look what these masked creatures, Hamas, who are like ISIS, are doing to them. I don't know what to say about these people anymore. It's as if God sent them into this world to become devils. How do you negotiate with people who say they want to kill everyone who is like you? "We don't just want your land," they tell us, "we want to murder all the Jews." And after the Jews, they will murder the Christians. "They're not crazy, you have to understand that. They're the devil in disguise."
The intensity with which she conveys these words to me is strikingly evident. We begin a conversation during which she tells me that in the town where she lives, Pisgat Ze'ev, in East Jerusalem, which was founded after the occupation of the area by the Israeli army in 1967, she herself does not feel safe at all. Her own experience, she says, is a constant attack on residents and soldiers with stones and Molotov cocktails. When I contrast her with the fact that Ben Gvir's supporters walk around Jerusalem thumping and shouting "Death to the Arabs" and his supporters, respectively, throw stones at Palestinians in the West Bank, she tells me that Ben Gvir does not want to kill Arabs.
And what does he want?
"He wants to expel everyone who wants to kill us: if you want to kill me, leave my country, he says. The difference is that Hamas is proud of what their children did on October 7. They teach their children that killing a Jew is a holy thing, a great thing. You become a hero. And if you die and become a 'martyr,' even more so: you go to heaven. This thing is sick. Even the award for the dead martyrs — the virgins and the pilaf — is sick. The others came from Gaza and went and attacked the peace activists in the kibbutzim, the people who were taking them to hospitals in Israel."
She's really loaded now.
"Sinwar! Sinwar was in a hospital in Israel and we saved him from cancer – for what? So he could go back and plan for October 7th."
He stops abruptly. He tries to calm down.
"I want to talk about Roma, I only want to talk about him. I'm here as a mother. And I'm talking to you as a mother. I want to talk to the mothers who will read this article: It doesn't matter if you're Jewish, Muslim, Christian, from Thailand — it doesn't matter: if you're a mother, I'm speaking to you from my heart to your heart: don't imagine Roma, a Jew, 21 years old now. Imagine your five-year-old, two-year-old children — because Roma needs his mother just like these five-year-old and two-year-old children, to hold him by the hand and tell him, 'Everything will be fine,' and 'I'm here, with you, for you, you'll be fine, you'll see.' I want mothers to imagine their sons as little children because the hostages are little children: you saw them crying like little children, shaking like little children. They are still there, without running water, without light, without clean clothes, without air, in the dark. These are people who did nothing wrong, were not guilty of anything. They could have been anyone. It is important for me to tell the story of Rom to the world, to see that they do not forget him, because this is not just a family tragedy, it is a tragedy for the entire people of Israel, it is a tragedy for the entire planet.”
Do you have other children?
"I have an older son, 25, and a younger one who just had his Bar Mitzvah. He came to Athens with me and he doesn't want to go anywhere, not even swim in the sea, or anything. He's staying at the hotel. He doesn't feel like doing anything. It's very difficult for us, you know. We constantly have to come up with ideas about what else we can do, who we can talk to. We do the best we can, but still Rom is there. Sasha told me that Rom was sad that the girl he took in his arms didn't make it, that she took her last breath with him. But I'm happy that the last thing that girl saw was my son, reassuring her, making her feel safe, making her feel important, that someone is taking care of her and cares about her. He didn't leave her in the field to die like a dog.
The next day, my brother took Moshe to go with the police to reenact what happened. And Moshe took him to where the girls were hiding in the field, and then he took them to where Rom hid her body, and the body was there. And the girl “returned” to her home, safe, without being abused, without being raped, without being physically abused, without being kidnapped. Rom risked his life to preserve the girl’s dead body. So that it wouldn’t be desecrated. I go to his room every day and I talk to him, I tell him to stay strong, I tell him that he will make it. Just like he helped so many others make it.”
SOURCE: Athens Voice, 26.06.2025