Rom Braslavski, a hostage freed this week after two years in captivity in Gaza under Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was tortured, kept in shackles and repeatedly pressured to convert to Islam in exchange for food, his mother Tami Braslavski told Ynet on Wednesday.
In an emotional interview, Braslavski described harrowing details from her son's captivity, saying he told her he had seen the bodies of other hostages before his release. “Hamas knows where they are. Bring them home, and then I can say I’m home,” he reportedly told her.
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Rom Braslavski at Sheba Medical Center after his release from Gaza captivity
(Photo: Eran Yardeni/GPO)
She said her son was abused physically and psychologically, and the mistreatment worsened in the final months. “They tried to make him convert to Islam, promising him food in return, but Rom insisted on preserving his Jewish identity,” she said. “The moment he came back, he put on tefillin.”
In the early weeks of his captivity, Rom was held in a cramped one-meter-by-one-meter room, where he was shackled by all four limbs. His captors locked him in and left, giving him only half a piece of dry flatbread and a bit of rice each evening. He was often deprived of proper sanitation and had to relieve himself in a bottle that his captors collected once each night. He marked the days on the wall until he decided he had to take action to survive.
Rom Braslavski arrives at the hospital after his release from Gaza captivity
(Video: Aviram Hasson/GPO)
In one incident, during a period of extreme hunger, he managed to break free of his restraints and tried to cook pasta. When the gas stove didn’t work, he set fire to the clothes and a book belonging to one of the terrorists, using it to boil water in a pot. He made a fire inside a small bathroom in the apartment, but the plastic-covered windows trapped the smoke. Neighbors, fearing a fire, began banging on the windows and shouting.
Rom panicked. “He thought, ‘If they find me here, I’m dead,’” his mother recounted. Fearing a lynching, he hid under the bed and covered himself with a blanket as dozens of people stormed the room. “He felt them above the mattress,” she said. “They saw the shackles, realized a hostage was there, and began searching.” Rom said he prayed until his captor returned, and the crowd eventually left. His captor returned later but did not punish him, she said.
Before his release, captors force-fed him, and he continues to suffer from the effects. Since returning home, he has rejected gifts or attention. “He tells me, ‘I don’t need anything. I don’t want a phone, TV or computer. Just sky, sun and air,’” she said.
She added that his captors manipulated him with misinformation, telling him that Iran had bombed Israel, the country was nearly destroyed, buildings had collapsed and some 3,000 soldiers had died. They had tried to demoralize him by showing him footage from Hostages Square in Tel Aviv and claiming his photo wasn’t there. “They told him no one was talking about him, that we were broken and had no strength to protest.”
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Rom Braslavski and his family airlifted to the hospital after his release from captivity in Gaza
(Photo: IDF)
Braslavski said the family chose not to attend protests but instead worked to raise awareness around the world. “I told Rom’s story everywhere I could,” she said.
At the end of the interview, she issued a plea to continue the push to bring home the remaining hostages. “This isn’t over. There are still 19 hostages and fallen soldiers who must come home. There are families whose hearts are still beating, waiting for their loved ones — even if their loved one’s heart has already stopped.”
She thanked the IDF, bereaved families, the government and the U.S. president, saying: “Thank you to Bibi Netanyahu, thank you to Trump, thank you to everyone who had a hand in this. Trump was determined to end the war. He mobilized everyone, and it happened in the blink of an eye, like a dream.”