October 7 · Personal story
Tal Shoham
Abducted
October 7, 2023
Abduction location
Kibbutz Be’eri
Current outcome
Released alive · February 22, 2025
Released alive on 22 February 2025 after 505 days in captivity.
01
Life before
Tal Shoham lived in Maale Tzvia with Adi and their children, Naveh and Yahel. He volunteered with Magen David Adom’s emergency paramedic service and managed Kibbutz Be’eri’s printing house, according to the Hostage Family Forum as reported by the Associated Press. For Simchat Torah weekend, the family travelled to visit Adi’s parents in Be’eri. Adi had grown up there, and extended family were visiting too. Their trip brought grandparents, children, cousins and in-laws together for the holiday. In the family’s later years, the contrast between their northern home and their visits to Be’eri became part of the story Tal told publicly after release.
02
Abduction
On October 7, attackers entered the Haran family’s safe room in Be’eri. Tal later wrote that they failed to open the door, then broke in through a window. Before separating the family, he looked at Naveh and said he did not know whether they would die. The attackers dragged Tal away and put him into a vehicle. Adi and the children were taken in a different group. The family’s relatives learned over the following weeks that some had been killed and that Tal, Adi and the children were being held in Gaza. The family had begun the holiday together; by the end of the attack, relatives were dead, missing or being held in Gaza.
03
Captivity
Tal spent 505 days in captivity, much of it deep underground. In his first-person essay, he describes constant camera surveillance and a bomb planted above the captives, with threats that rescuers would trigger it. He says guards sometimes tortured him and other hostages for amusement, and set paper alight to use up the tunnel’s small amount of oxygen. He and the other men created daily rituals and traded stories to remember themselves as people. Tal did not know whether his wife and children had survived for 50 days. Then Adi’s note reached him: she and the children had been released. He remained separated from them for more than a year after they returned.
04
Return
Tal was released alive on February 22, 2025, after 505 days. He was reunited with Adi and the children, who had been home since November 2023. The separation had lasted 15 months: Adi and the children had made a life in Israel without knowing when he would return, and Tal had received only a brief note from them in Gaza. His release brought together two timelines that began at the same family visit but had split on October 7.
05
Aftermath
After returning, Tal wrote that sunlight, fresh air and quiet time with his children felt different after more than a year underground. He also promised to speak for hostages who could not tell their own stories. That promise became part of his public life after release. AP reporting about his February 2025 release describes the scene of him standing before crossing the border, while his essay records what he chose to say next: each person still held has a name and a family waiting.