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Since Sunday morning, residents, neighbors and mourners have been leaving flowers, notes and decorations outside a Brookline home in what has become a memorial for Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American who was killed in Gaza last week.
Goldberg-Polin, 23, was wounded and taken hostage during the Oct. 7 attack by the terrorist group Hamas in Israel, where he was attending a music festival. He was held for almost a year before his body was found in Rafah on Aug. 31 along with five other hostages.
According to the Associated Press, Israeli forensics experts believe they were shot at close range last week, shortly before Israeli troops reached the tunnel where they were being held.
Cheryl Sanders, a Brookline resident who lives on Washington Street, said she is a decades-long friend of his mother, Rachel Goldberg.
For eight months, Sanders has had a sign on her fence, prominently visible on Washington Street, reading “Bring Hersh home now” in English and Hebrew – screwed onto the fence after other signs in support of Israel were taken down and stolen, she said.
On Sunday morning, the day after the news came out that Goldberg-Polin had been killed, flowers and messages started showing up beneath the sign, Sanders said. The memorial has been growing every day since.
“We are beyond devastated at the murder of my friend’s son,” said Sanders. “Hersh is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. He was soft-spoken, and had real wanderlust and wanted to travel the world.”
She last saw him on Sept. 7, 2023, at a mutual friend’s wedding, where he told her he planned to go to India in December, a trip that never happened.
“He had enormous respect for his family, for his grandparents. He was interested in the world, in atlases and globes,” said Sanders. “It’s tragic that this beautiful soul is lost because of hatred. I’m sorry for the world to not have a person like Hersh to be part of the next generation.”
The killing of Goldberg-Polin has reverberated in both the Boston area and among policymakers in Washington, D.C. It has also prompted major protests in Israel.
In a brief interview on Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, whose district includes Brookline, said it was an “unspeakable tragedy” and that he has spoken with Goldberg-Polin’s parents as well as an aunt who lives in Newton.
“Their courage in the face of the worst nightmare imaginable should harden Americans’ resolve to seek the return of all hostages, including the four American living hostages who remain in these terror tunnels,” Auchincloss said.
He also pointed to the atrocity of Hamas’ actions.
“Hamas had these six young hostages film videos to their family members. They then executed them. This is an organization that exists on the other side of the line that separates civilization from barbarity, and they can have no place in postwar governance in Gaza,” Auchincloss said.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the month in which Goldberg-Polin was planning to travel to India.