Ex-Hostage Sings Songs He Wrote in 500 Days of Captivity

Sagui Dekel-Chen stood before 3,000 people in his hometown of Nir Oz, Israel, ready to share songs no one knew existed. He'd written them in the tunnels beneath Gaza during 498 days of captivity, composing each note in his mind without pencil or paper.

On October 7, 2023, gunmen stormed his home and shot him as he protected his family. His seven-month-pregnant wife and two young daughters hid in their safe room as terrorists filled the house.

Dragged into Gaza, Dekel-Chen heard gunshots and explosions from his home. He believed his entire family had been killed.

"As far as I knew, I don't have any family to go back to," he said. "But I understood very soon that I'm going to need to lie to myself, because if that's what I'm going to think or believe, I won't survive."

So he created an elaborate fiction. He imagined his wife alive, his daughters growing, and a new baby he'd never met. When depression crushed that lie, he'd rebuild it again.

In the darkness, he began composing songs. He wrote lullabies for daughters he believed were dead, imagining bedtime routines that would never happen. The creative process consumed time and gave him purpose when everything else had been stripped away.

Released in February 2025 as part of a prisoner swap, Dekel-Chen discovered the truth in a hospital bed. His wife had survived. His daughters were alive. And Shahar, the baby born during his captivity, had just turned two.

From his hospital room, he recorded every song from memory onto his phone. They poured out fully formed, preserved by months of mental repetition in captivity.

Why This Inspires

The concert in Nir Oz carried special meaning for the community. Of the town's 400 residents, more than 40 died in the attack and 70 were taken hostage. No Israeli community suffered greater losses.

For Dekel-Chen's family, the event marked their first return since that terrible day. His oldest daughter, nine-year-old Bar, had refused to come back until the concert. "For them, there is no kibbutz," her father explained.

But on that grass lawn where he'd grown up, had his first date with his wife, and later raised his daughters, something shifted. The same ground where he'd fought for his life became a place of healing.

His father Jonathan watched his granddaughter Bar stand with him in the crowd. "She was incredibly brave for the nearly 500 days that her dad was in captivity, and none of us knew what the end of that story was going to be," he said.

One song held particular power. Dekel-Chen had written it for the daughter whose name he didn't know, titled "I Still Don't Know Your Name." At the concert, Shahar sat with her sisters, finally able to hear the lullaby her father had sung silently for her in the dark.

"This event was the first time we crossed the line for Nir Oz," Dekel-Chen said, describing the distance between total brokenness and being alive again.

Three thousand people gathered to witness one man's transformation of suffering into song, proving that even in the darkest places, the human spirit finds ways to create light.

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