Mother of soldier Nachshon Wachsman dies, 30 years after his kidnapping and murder

The mother of an IDF soldier and dual Israeli American citizen kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in the West Bank died Monday, 30 years after the incident. Esther Wachsman was 76 year old.

Her son, Nachshon Wachsman, was abducted in October 1994 while hitching a ride near Jerusalem. He was held for six days, while Esther made an appeal to Israelis to pray for him.

Israel eventually mounted a failed attempt to rescue Wachsman, which resulted in his death, as well as the death of one of the soldiers in the extraction force, and the injury of several more. His captors were all killed in the raid.

Since Nachshon’s death, Esther committed herself to commemorating him and Cpt. Nir Poraz, the soldier who was killed during the attempted rescue.

Her funeral was held Monday night in Jerusalem.

She is survived by six children and dozens of grandchildren. Her husband Yehuda Wachsman passed away in 2020.

אסתר וקסמן שהלכה היום לעולמה הייתה המורה שלי לאנגלית בתיכון, עם האנרגיה התוססת והמבטא האמריקאי.

ואני זוכר את הצער הגדול על האסון שפקד את המשפחה כמה שנים לאחר מכן כשבנה נחשון נחטף על-ידי מחבלי חמאס ונרצח במהלך ניסיון החילוץ, שבו נהרג גם לוחם סיירת מטכ"ל ניר פורז.

Advertisement

יהי זכרה… pic.twitter.com/YVUD1x0e0z

— Yaacov Ben-Shemesh (@YBenshemesh) March 3, 2025

Esther Wachsman was born in a displaced people’s camp in Germany in 1947 to German Jewish Holocaust survivors whose entire families perished. The family later emigrated to Brooklyn.

She came to Israel in 1969, and received a master’s degree in history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in the Holocaust.

In Israel, Esther met her future husband Yehuda Wachsman. They had seven children, including Nachshon, and lived in Jerusalem.

A mother to a child with Down Syndrome, she was also active in Shalva, a non-profit that serves people with special needs. She also taught English at the Hebrew University High School for nearly three decades.

Nachshon Wachsman, then a 19-year-old sergeant in the IDF’s Golani infantry brigade, was abducted on Sunday, October 9, 1994, in Jerusalem.

Wachsman had left a military base in northern Israel and disappeared after trying to hitch a ride from central Israel’s Bnei Atarot Junction.

Two days after he disappeared, his captors released a video demanding the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for his freedom. They vowed to kill him the following Friday at 8 p.m. if Israel did not comply.

Speaking to the camera, Wachsman said in the video: “Hamas captured me, they want to release their prisoners. If not, they will kill me. I ask of you to do what you can to get me out of here alive.”

To his parents, he said: “I hope to come back to you.”

A team from the elite Sayeret Matkal special forces unit tried to rescue Wachsman from Bir Nabala, the Palestinian village north of Jerusalem where he was held, but his Hamas captors killed him as the soldiers closed in. Poraz, who led the break-in force, was also killed.

Poraz’s father had been an air force pilot and was killed in the Yom Kippur War when Poraz was an infant. Poraz received a commendation for bravery following the failed operation and was buried next to his father in the Kiryat Shaul military cemetery.

Yitzhak Rabin, who was prime minister at the time, took responsibility for the failed operation.

Speaking to the Maariv newspaper on the 30th anniversary of his brother’s abduction, Hezi Wachsman said that Rabin had told the family he would not comply with Hamas’s ransom demand.

“Rabin came to our home, hugged us, cried with us but told us right to our faces: ‘I’m sorry, I’m not giving into terror.’ And we took it very hard… but deep inside we could understand,” he said.

Wachsman was executed on the spot, the second the terrorists realized that there are forces attempting to break in.
the leader of the commando team, Captain Nir Poraz (no family ties) was killed in fire exchange. Post Mortem he received the Chief of Staff citation >> pic.twitter.com/ShkhBKRubf

— Dan Poraz (@PorazDan) October 9, 2020

Among the masterminds of Wachsman’s abduction was Muhammad Deif, who would go on to become Hamas’s military chief and plan the onslaught that sparked the current war in Gaza, when thousands of terrorists stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.

After years of assassination attempts, Israel killed Deif in an airstrike on Khan Younis in July amid the war in Gaza.

Another key figure involved in Wachsman’s abduction, Jihad Yaghmour — now Hamas’s liaison in Turkey — was freed from Israeli prison as part of the 2011 deal to release soldier Gilad Shalit, after more than five years in captivity.

Esther and Yehud Wachsman were active in the public campaign to secure the release of Shalit, who attended Yehuda’s funeral in 2020.

Esther Wachsman said as early as 2008 that she told then-premier Ehud Olmert she endorsed Yaghmour’s release as part of a deal to secure Shalit’s release, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to three years later.

“I told him that I can’t sleep at night. That I’m here as a mother and not an objective citizen. I can’t imagine 900 days of knowing how awful things are for my son,” she said. “After what I saw happen to Gilad Shalit I was even happy my tragic story was over quickly.”

“I give up on my son’s murderer,” she said. “My Nachshon will forgive me.”

Esther Wachsman had not spoken to the media during the current hostage crisis.

Speaking to Maariv last October, her son Hezi said he could feel the hostage families’ pain but was unsure if it was right that the captives return “at any price.”

“We saw what happened in the Shalit deal, which led to the October 7 disaster,” he said. Among the terrorists released in the Shalit deal was Yahya Sinwar, who would go on to become Hamas’s leader in Gaza and, along with Deif, a mastermind of the October 7 atrocities.