After the oct. 7 massacre

THE SCENE AS RECOUNTED BY EYAL NOURI IS almost too painful to tell: his uncle, Said Moshe, was killed in front of his aunt Adina. His last sighting of Adina is from a photograph posted online: “You see her on a motorcycle,” Eyal says. “She’s sitting in the middle between the two terrorists. Think about the situation. A few minutes ago she saw her husband, the one that she loved for the last 50 years, murdered in front of her eyes, and now they’re taking her to an unknown place in the Gaza Strip.”

Adina Moshe, 72, is believed to be one of nearly 200 hostages taken by Hamas following the Oct. 7 Massacre, which killed at least 1,400 people in Israel. It was, as TIME’s Karl Vick wrote in the hours after the attack, Israel’s Sept. 11, the worst act of violence committed against Jews since the Holocaust.

Events were moving fast in the Middle East as we closed this week’s cover story. President Biden arrived. Hundreds of people were feared dead following an explosion at a Gaza City hospital. Diplomats were working to create a humanitarian safe zone in Gaza while Israeli airstrikes continued. Thousands of people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, Palestinian health authorities said, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are trying to evacuate, though many have nowhere safe to go.

As these events throttled forward, we felt it was important to pause, and to listen to the family members of those who were taken on Oct. 7. In recent days, TIME reporters, editors, photographers, video journalists, and contributors have worked around the clock to gather the voices of the families Hamas has placed in a terrible limbo. Their stories are assembled here, along with this week’s cover, which features Rachel Goldberg and Jonathan Polin, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin, age 23, is, like Adina Moshe, believed to be among the hostages.

Keren Schem’s daughter Mia, 21, was taken from the Nova music festival. Schem has not heard from her daughter since the attack. On Oct. 16, Hamas released a video of Mia. “I want to tell Mia, if she hears me: I will do everything I can,” Keren Schem told TIME. “And if they hear me, our cruel enemy, I’m telling them now: You can come here and you can take me. Br