Esther Wachsman knows what it is like to hear a plea from a kidnapped son held by Hamas.
Esther Wachsman, mother of Nachshon who was kidnapped and killed by Hamas terrorists in October 1994.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski
Her son, Nachshon, was captured in 1994 and then killed six days later during a botched IDF rescue mission by the Palestinian gunmen who held him.
Within two days of his disappearance on October 9, Hamas released a videotape of her bound 19-year-old son still in his khaki army uniform. Standing behind him was a terrorist who had a red keffiyeh wrapped around his face and a rifle slung over his soldier.
"I am Nachshon Wachsman. Those who kidnapped me want their prisoners released or they will kill me," her son said when prompted to speak by the terrorist.
Twelve years later, when Hamas captured 19-year-old soldier Gilad Schalit in a border raid and took him to Gaza, the initial similarity with her son's story prompted Esther to call Gilad's parents, Aviva and Noam, to offer them her support.
At the time, she said: "It is the same record playing over again."
Last month, she and her husband Yehuda went to the protest tent the Schalit family had set up outside former prime minister Ehud Olmert's Jerusalem residence.
Noam and Aviva sat in the tent for two weeks in March to pressure Olmert before he left office to conclude a prisoner exchange with Hamas for Gilad's release.
Visitors to that tent were often greeted by a simulated sound of Gilad's voice, pleading: "Save me!"
Although she has been an opponent of prisoner releases, Esther said she could not bear to think of another young man in a similar situation to that of her son.
"I can't separate from the mother in me. Nobody can understand this, unless they have experienced it," she said.
Esther called Olmert during the Schalit's two-week protest when it seemed as if a deal was possible.
She told him that if it would help free Gilad, she would even be willing to have her son's kidnapper released from jail.
But, she added, "I hoped he would do it with some sense."
Esther said she was among those who believed that those prisoners responsible for murdering Israelis should be deported if they are released.
This is not an easy stance for her to take, she said.
"Thank God, I do not have to make these decisions," Esther said. "I understand the fear of letting all the killers out because they are going to kill again."
There are other measures beyond a prisoner swap or a rescue operation that could be employed, such as shutting down electricity in Gaza, Esther said.
At the invitation of Gilad's mother, Esther sat next to her in the visitors' gallery in the Knesset earlier this month to hear Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's first address, in which he promised to make Gilad's release a priority.
As someone who knew something about the price that can be paid for rescuing hostages, Netanyahu read from a letter that his brother, Yonatan, had written to the family just before Pessah.
It was one of the last letters the family received from "Yoni" before he was killed leading a successful mission to free over a hundred hostages held by Palestinian terrorists in Entebbe.
In the letter, Netanyahu said, his brother wrote of his belief that he was an inseparable link in the chain of Jewish history that spanned from biblical times to the modern state of Israel.
As children of Holocaust survivors, Esther and Yehuda Wachsman are fully aware of the weight of that history.
She was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany in 1947 to parents who had been in Nazi concentration camps. A Catholic woman hid her older sister.
In 1950, the family immigrated to New York. Esther left the United States for Israel in 1969, where she met and married Yehuda in 1970. Yehuda had made aliya with his family from Romania in 1959 at the age of 11.
Together they raised seven sons in Jerusalem, six of whom have served in the army.
The first two were named for relatives who perished in the Holocaust. The third, Nachshon, was born the day after Pessah in 1975.
With an eye toward history and the Bible, they named him for the person who spurred the ancient Israelites into crossing the Red Sea after fleeing from Egypt.
As the Israelites stood on the sea bank terrified to head into the churning waters, Nachshon jumped in. Only then did the sea part for everyone to safely cross.
During Pessah 1948, it was Operation Nachshon that opened the road to Jerusalem during the War of Independence, Esther noted.
Her son, Nachshon, Esther said, "was a very fun-loving and peace-making type who went to yeshiva."
Outside their home, he volunteered with Ethiopian Jews and Magen David Adom and was very active in the Ezra youth movement.
Inside, he had a special relationship with his youngest brother Rafael, who has Down Syndrome.
Nachshon would take him to his afternoon program at the Shalva Center for children with special needs and pick him up, said Esther.
Out of all her other sons, "he was the one who played with [Rafael] the most."
Both Nachson's older brothers served in Golani. He followed in their footsteps and then tried to outdo them by gaining acceptance to the elite Orev Golani unit.
Two days before he was taken, Nachshon had just arrived home on Friday for a week's break from serving in Lebanon.
After Shabbat, the army called him to say they were sending him up North for a one-day course on Sunday.
He left later that night with his friend, Moshe, who had received the same call.
There was nothing unusual about his departure, recalled Esther. She gave him a hug and a kiss and said, "See you tomorrow night."
When he had not returned by 9 p.m. the next day, his parents became nervous. They called Moshe, who had already arrived home.
He said he had dropped Nachshon at the Bnai Atarot Junction, just outside Yehud.
Nachshon told Moshe that he would take what ever came first - a bus or a ride. By midnight, she and her husband telephoned the IDF's liaison officer in Jerusalem.
When he told them that nothing could be done for 24 hours, she and her husband began phoning police stations all over the country.
