October 7 · Personal story
Andrey Kozlov
Abducted
October 7, 2023
Abduction location
Nova music festival near Re’im, southern Israel
Current outcome
Rescued alive · June 8, 2024
Rescued during the Nuseirat operation that brought four hostages home on June 8, 2024.
01
Before October 7
Andrey Kozlov grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia. After compulsory military service, he decided to move to Israel and arrived in August 2022 through the Masa program. He interned in motion design at a Tel Aviv company. He liked cycling, surfing and road trips, and had drawn since childhood, though he sometimes went years without drawing. Before October 7, he took a security job at the Nova festival near Re’im. The work required night shifts watching for people without tickets. By the morning of the attack, he had barely slept for two nights.
02
Abduction at Nova
On October 7, gunfire interrupted Andrey’s work at Nova. He ran with others and climbed down a cliff while trying to escape. When he was led to a vehicle, he thought it would take him somewhere safe, not into captivity. He expected to be home by night and sent no message to his family. In Gaza, he was tied with rope, threatened with guns and beaten. He said he was certain that these might be the last moments of his life, and that his captors might kill him the next day.
03
In captivity
Andrey said the first days in captivity were terrible and he expected to be killed. Over eight months he was held in eight houses, guarded by men living nearby. Conditions varied; in one place he slept on a wet mattress. Restraints changed from ropes to chains. He and other captives made routines: cards, word games and conversations about music, movies and life before October 7. Andrey learned Arabic from guards and Hebrew from fellow captives. After several months, they gave him a pencil and notebook. He drew daily, including aliens, Don Corleone and the summer home in Russia where he had been happy as a child. He wrote goals: go home, use his skills, be free.
04
Rescue and return
On June 8, 2024, Israeli forces reached the house in Nuseirat where Andrey was held. The rescue operation brought him and three other hostages home. After 246 days in captivity, he felt sunlight and fresh air again. He drank a Coke and smoked a cigarette, describing the moment as euphoria and calling it the best day of his life. A helicopter brought him to safety. In the days that followed, he reunited with his family at a hospital near Tel Aviv. He fell to his knees and cried at his mother’s feet. Later, recalling his first phone conversation with his parents, he said he had cried that he had survived death twice: on October 7 and through the eight months that followed.
05
After captivity
After returning, Andrey spent his first months in Israel and later traveled in the United States. In May 2025, nearly a year after the rescue, he was working in a New York studio on acrylic paintings about his capture, captivity and release. He had started drawing in captivity with a pencil and notebook; later, art became part of his work. He told the Associated Press that most days he felt fine, but the darkness returned for a day or so each month. Sometimes he woke thinking he was back on the mattress where he had slept in captivity. He said he still felt pain for hostages and families who did not know where their loved ones were. After visiting Israel in 2025, he returned to the United States because reminders of captivity were difficult. He planned to finish paintings shaped by his experience, then turn toward new subjects.