October 7 · Personal story
Mia Schem
Abducted
October 7, 2023
Abduction location
Nova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im.
Current outcome
Released alive · November 30, 2023
Released alive and returned to Israel on November 30, 2023, during the truce.
01
A dream she was learning to make
Mia Schem was 21 and lived in Shoham. She had French citizenship and was training to become a tattoo artist. Her mother Keren described her as creative. The second of four children, Mia had completed her military service before October 7. She went to the Nova festival with her close friend Elia Toledano after spontaneously asking whether he wanted to go. They drove there in his car. In a July 2026 interview, she said she had not known how near the festival was to Gaza.
02
The road out of Nova
At 6:29 on October 7, Schem was filming a video with Toledano while waiting for sunrise at the festival. When rockets began, they ran to his car and left. Gunmen fired at passing vehicles on the road. Their car was hit repeatedly, rolled twice and trapped them until they climbed through the windows. They tried to hide beside it. While on the ground, Schem was shot in the arm at close range. She later recalled that the emergency line told them to hide because help could not reach them. Both she and Toledano were taken into Gaza.
03
A wounded arm and a watched room
Schem said a captor touched her inappropriately after she was taken from the burning car, then stopped when she screamed and he saw her wounded arm. In Gaza, she was kept in a family home and watched around the clock by the father. In a television interview reported by the Associated Press, she said his staring frightened her; she said the wife sometimes withheld food, and she barely slept, did not shower and received no medication. The captor’s children came into the room to look at her. A video released on October 16 showed her in bed with her right arm bandaged, asking to go home. Five days before her release, she was moved into a tunnel room with other hostages. In her 2026 interview she called that final period the hardest because of the hopelessness she saw in the other women.
04
Back in Israel
Mia was released alive on November 30, 2023, after 55 days in captivity. Her mother Keren, who had campaigned for her release, was filmed crying and embracing her other children when the news arrived. Her father David said he wanted to hold her without asking questions about what she had endured. The family thanked those who had worked for her release and asked for quiet while she received hospital treatment. Elia Toledano did not return alive; his body was recovered from Gaza in December 2023.
05
Learning to tell what happened
After returning, Mia underwent prolonged treatment for her injured arm. In December 2023, she spoke on Israeli television about being held in a family home and then in a tunnel. She described barely sleeping and feeling guilty about leaving other hostages behind. In July 2026, she travelled from Shoham to London to tell her story at the Nova exhibition and spoke with The Independent. She described being alive as a miracle and said she would not give up.