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INTERMEDIATE: Former hostage Rom Braslavski said he endured physical and emotional abuse while being held by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, sometimes surviving on half a pita bread and a slice of cheese, and that he was injected with an unknown substance after collapsing from exhaustion while being transferred to the Strip, he told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.
Braslavski, 19, was kidnapped at the Supernova festival during the Hamas-led massacre on October 7, 2023, where he was working as a security guard while completing his mandatory military service – a fact he hid for months. During the first four months of his captivity, he posed as a 16-year-old selling shawarma at a festival.
A terrorist whom he described as a cyber expert of Islamic Jihad in Palestine later arrived with a laptop and headphones and started questioning him. Fearing that his cover had been blown, Braslavski then revealed his identity.
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This screenshot from a video released on July 31 by the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad shows Rom Braslavski released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. (Captains and Families of the Missing Forum/AFP via Getty Images)
“Immediately they reduced my food by three quarters. I was on half a pita, a bit of cheese, a rotten tomato and a small bottle of water, where before I had two or three pitas and a liter of water,” he told Fox News Digital.
For the next three months, Braslavski said he was kept in solitary confinement outside the daylight hours, describing the experience as so dark and lonely that he began banging his head against the wall.
At that time, he was forced to walk to a vast area of ​​approximately 20,000 tents near Nasser Hospital. On the way he fainted from hunger and fatigue, was injected with an unknown substance and was forced to continue moving.
“I was surrounded by Islamic Jihad members. No one told me where we were going. I cried, thinking they were going to kill me or take me to a tunnel to torture me more,” Braslavski told Fox News Digital.
Rom Braslavski and Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion at the Jerusalem Winner Marathon. (Photo credit: Jerusalem Marathon/Arnon Bossani)
“I walked with no energy, breathing as if it was my last breath, thinking it would be the last time I saw the light of the sun. I continued,” he added.
At the shopping center, Braslavski said that tents were packed with no privacy, and vandalized cars were turned into shelters. The camp consisted of donkeys and camels, and people let loose openly. He described being so hot that it was difficult to breathe.
Braslavski lived in one such tent for four months. When the terrorist in charge ordered the others not to harass him, one of the four guards – a young man who cannot be named – ignored those orders.
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“He did everything he could to break me. Once, he brought me food, spat on it, and forced me to eat it. He always humiliated me. I had a small hole in the tent to breathe air, and he would go over and close it. When I told him I couldn’t breathe, he would slap me and laugh with others. He showed me videos of violence against our soldiers. He would tie my hands and feet,” Braslav said no.
Although he should not have been hurt without reason, Braslavski said the guard constantly insulted him, threatened his family, and forced him to perform humiliating acts until it became unbearable.
Rom Braslavski was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023. (Forum of kidnappers and missing families)
Braslavski told Fox News Digital that the abuse left him filled with hatred, causing him to attack the security guard with all his might and use anything he could find around him to hurt him, eventually succeeding.
“He started running to get his Kalashnikov, and I realized that I can continue or take a bullet in the head. I continued to hit him with all my strength. He became weak. I was also weak, but my body and mind were not connected to everything, I continued,” Braslavski recounted.
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Reef Peretz, Chairman of the Nova Foundation, looks at the names and faces of the people killed during the Nova festival “Nova Music Festival Exhibition: October 7th 06:29 AM, The Moment Music Stood Still” on April 18, 2024 in New York City. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images for the Nova Music Festival Exhibition)
After three to four minutes, another terrorist intervened and the guard Braslavski had attacked was rushed to the hospital.
“The next day was the darkest Tuesday in my life after October 7. It was marked in my memory, in my soul and in my body. The big terrorist decided to respond harshly to what I did, and from then on I got into the problem of constant torture,” he said.
Braslavski said he was then allowed to sleep no more than an hour and a half a day, in short bursts.
“They beat me with whatever they had in hand. I suffered severe torture, arrests and sexual abuse. Everything they could do to me, they did. My body is still full of scars. After four months of torture, I was dead in the clinic – I rolled my eyes and left. They decided to stop the violence and brought doctors to treat me with injections and gave me food again,” he added.
Rom Braslavski and Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni. (office of the Italian Prime Minister)
During Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which began in May 2025 with the stated aim of defeating Hamas and ensuring the return of hostages through military pressure, Braslavski said the terrorists were in charge of his bodyguards and he was injured and lost a family member, which started another cycle of torture and starvation.
“I weighed 49 kilograms, and a high terrorist, weighing 90 kilograms, would jump on my neck and try to break it. I was on the verge of death again. That’s when the propaganda video that showed me was released, and it is possible to see the marks on my body from torture. My bones were coming out. I could no longer go to my bathroom and everything was stopped when Donald stopped dying. Trump entered the picture,” he told Fox News Digital.
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With each step forward in the deal talks, Braslavski said his condition gradually improved, until he was released in October 2025 after 738 days in detention.
What keeps him going as a free man, he said, is his faith.
“I have a dark past, but I must have a bright future. I want to forget what happened, although I can’t. God gave me back my life as a gift – not once, but twice. I need to do at least the minimum, that is, to live, renew myself and put all this behind me,” he said.
