Hundreds of people packed the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center in Oak Bluffs Tuesday to hear two freed Israeli hostages describe their time as prisoners in Gaza.

The audience welcomed couple Sapir Cohen and Sasha Troufanov, who were interviewed for more than an hour by Rabbi Tzvi Alperowitz and his wife, Hadassah, of Chabad on the Vineyard.

On Oct. 7, 2023, Ms. Cohen and Mr. Troufanov were visiting his parents and grandmother at Kibbutz Nir Oz, near the Gaza border, when a large force of Palestinian militants attacked early in the morning.

“I heard the rockets. It was like a rain falling. They were very strong,” Ms. Cohen told the audience, describing a continuous barrage that began around 6 a.m.

Rabbi Tzvi Alperowitz, far left, interviews the former hostages with his wife Hadassah Alperowitz, far right.

Maria Thibodeau

Rabbi Tzvi Alperowitz, far left, interviews the former hostages with his wife Hadassah Alperowitz, far right.

Maria Thibodeau

Mr. Troufanov said at first he didn’t believe the kibbutz was under attack.

“We had an argument about if the terrorists are the voices that we are hearing, or if there is a fight between the army and them,” he said.

As the attack grew closer, the couple — Ms. Cohen still in pajamas — had no place to hide but under the bed, in a heap of blankets, where the invaders soon found them.

Attempting to resist, Mr. Troufanov was beaten and shot. The couple, along with Mr. Troufanov’s mother and grandmother, were taken hostage along with more than 60 other people from the kibbutz. Mr. Troufanov’s father was among several who were killed outright.

The hostages then were bundled onto motorcycles — sandwiched between two captors on each bike — and taken across the border to Gaza, where they said celebrating crowds greeted them with kicks and fists.

“I remember the feeling of saying to myself, this is the place I’m going to die,” Mr. Troufanov said.

It would be nearly a year and a half before he would see any of his loved ones again. 

Although his mother, grandmother and Ms. Cohen were handed back to Israel during the temporary truce of November, 2023, Mr. Troufanov remained a hostage until Feb. 15, 2025.

Both Ms. Cohen and Mr. Troufanov were moved several times between homes above ground and the extensive tunnel network beneath Gaza, which she described as a perpetually damp labyrinth of subterranean passageways.

“The tunnels, it’s like a city...  it’s very complicated,” Ms. Cohen said. “Some of the terrorists, even they don’t know all the ways in the tunnels.”

Their experiences in Gaza were very different. Ms. Cohen was held with other hostages, while Mr. Troufanov was a solitary prisoner who saw only his guards and, occasionally, the guards’ children — including a little girl, whose first interaction with him was to kick his leg because he was a hated Jew.

As time went by, he recalled Tuesday, the girl became friendlier and even gave him an affectionate hug one day.

“Her love was real, [but] unfortunately, she’s being raised in a different way,” said Mr. Troufanov, the only child of a Catholic father and Jewish mother who had imposed neither doctrine on their son.

Ms. Cohen was raised in the Jewish faith. Although she was not strictly observant, she told the audience, in the fall of 2023 she had begun to pray the 27rd psalm daily after suffering months of premonitions about a risk to her health.

As militants shot the lock out of the couple’s door on Oct. 7, 2023, amid the deafening sound of weaponry and screams throughout the kibbutz, Ms. Cohen repeated the psalm under her breath.

“I didn’t want to say something with the meaning of goodbye. I wanted to stay alive,” she said.

“What I felt that I had in that moment was just my prayer. I decided to say it again and again and again and... I felt a little bit of peace inside of myself,” Ms. Cohen said.

Through their harrowing trip across the border, a violent reception by Gaza citizens and more than a month of imprisonment, Ms. Cohen held onto her faith — and acted on it.

“If God decided to send me to this place, it’s because there is a reason behind it,” she recalled thinking. “I’m supposed to be there, and the question is why.”

Ms. Cohen found the answer when she looked at her fellow hostages: a terrified, weeping teenaged girl and a man so traumatized he wouldn’t even open his eyes.

“I felt that maybe I’m in a dark place, but God sent me to a place that I can be the most meaningful person in the world,” she said. “I decided that this is my mission, that I want to help the other people around me.”

She did that by keeping her own spirits up and encouraging her fellow captives, Ms. Cohen said.

“I could take a bad moment and make it a funny moment,” she said, recalling the first time her group was to be moved into the tunnels.

“This girl, she came to me and she says, ‘Sapir, I don’t want to go there, I’m scared,’” Ms. Cohen said. “I told her that, you know, we are in Gaza and we have to see the number one attraction here — it’s the tunnels! So we go to the tunnels, and it’s a dark place, but she looked at me all the way, so I’m saying, ‘Wow, it’s wonderful.’”

Even her captors noticed her attitude, asking why she always seemed so “happy, happy,” Ms. Cohen said.

“And I’d say, ‘Why not? I’m visiting Gaza.’”

Imprisoned alone, with nothing to pass the time, Mr. Troufanov set about learning Arabic from his ever-changing cast of captors.

“I was introduced to a lot of different terrorists, which means that I got to see a lot of different ways of thinking and a lot of different approaches to this situation of the hostages,” he said.

“Unfortunately, for all of them, it was very hard to make the relationship at the beginning. It took some time and patience really to understand the person that is in front of me, to really penetrate the wall of hatred, false information and extreme religion,” Mr. Troufanov said.

After 498 days in captivity, Mr. Troufanov was released during the February ceasefire deal. Only then did he learn that his father had been killed in the Oct. 7 attack. And only then did he find that Ms. Cohen had waited for him, refusing to give up hope that he’d come home.

The couple now are speaking in public to raise awareness and support for the 50 hostages still in Gaza, including some of the men who had been imprisoned alongside Ms. Cohen.

Their appearance in Oak Bluffs was presented by Chabad on the Vineyard.

Editors note: the story has been corrected to reference that Sapir Cohan was reciting psalm 27 while being held hostage.