It was during his last months in Hamas captivity in Gaza that Andrey Kozlov, a 27-year-old Russian-Israeli, began drawing in a blank notepad using a pencil and a small eraser tip, given to him by his terrorist captors.

“They had moved us to another place and already taken off our chains,” Kozlov told The Times of Israel.

“I started to draw something from my imagination. My interpretation of my experience,” he said.

Now Kozlov is in New York, making a fresh start with his life and his art. He is planning an exhibit of paintings created after his captivity that will tell the story of his experience.

Kozlov was one of 251 hostages abducted to the Gaza Strip by Hamas terrorists during their devastating October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Kozlov was taken from the Nova desert rave where he had been working as a security guard. Hundreds of people were massacred at the party.

He was held captive with 21-year-old Almog Meir Jan and 40-year-old Shlomi Ziv.

All three were rescued in June 2024 by Israeli special forces who raided the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Also freed was Noa Argamani, who was being held in a separate home not far from the other hostages.

In mid-December 2023, after several months of being moved around by their captors, the three were moved to the apartment of Abdallah Aljamal, 36, a Hamas operative who moonlighted as a journalist.

The captives’ hands and legs were unshackled, and they were moved into a larger room that Kozlov has described as being divided into two parts, with a blanket blocking a large doorway between the captives and the guards.

The curtains were always drawn over the window, and the guards sat next door in a small anteroom with a television.

During the six months in which they were held there, Kozlov amassed about 25 different drawings. He drew movie characters from his imagination and sketched visions of happiness and his hopes for the future.

One of those drawings featured a bald, shirtless man in front of a bright source of light, appearing to be praying for something, described Kozlov.

There were also sketches that Kozlov drew of hopelessness and anger.

“I didn’t feel happiness in Gaza, but I hoped to get out of there,” he said. “I drew about how I would feel when I would be set free.”

Kozlov has spoken at length about the physical and psychological torture that he, Jan and Ziv experienced in captivity, as well as the constant threat of being killed by their captors. They were repeatedly told that no one remembered or cared about them back home in Israel.

Kozlov’s captors gave him the sketchbook as a kind of favor, and sometimes forced him to draw what they requested.

“I drew one drawing of the daughter of the terrorist and another one of the logo of Hamas,” he said. “And they were pretty interested in whatever new drawings I had in my sketchbook.”

On each drawing that Kozlov drew, he signed his name and the date in the bottom corner, as a method of tracking time.

He kept the drawings under the mattress where he slept.

On June 8, Kozlov left the drawings behind during the stunning and unexpected rescue, when Israeli commandos stormed the apartment, killing the Hamas captors and quickly ushering the hostages out of the house and to a helicopter.

Months later, in September 2024, Kozlov, who has never formally trained as an artist, began drawing again.

He had kept a running list in captivity of his future goals, as a way of keeping his focus on the future. One of those goals was to push forward with his art.

“I’m not a highly trained artist but I have something, I have some skills,” said Kozlov, adding that both his father and grandfather have always drawn, and always had a pencil in their hands.

After being rescued, Kozlov thought his art could be another way of telling his captivity story, without having to repeat the details in numerous media interviews.

“I wanted to show what happened and have people understand it without words,” he said.

Kozlov got that chance when he traveled to the US for the first time in September, landing in New York, the city of his dreams, he said.

He also spent time in Los Angeles, hosted in the studio of Israeli artist Tomer Peretz, where Kozlov began painting again. Peretz encouraged him to keep creating and producing more works.

He hopes to have a small show in New York in June and then bring that collection to exhibit in Israel over the summer.

“Fortunately for me, I don’t have major trauma because of this experience,” said Kozlov. “There are thousands of survivors from October 7, and some of them haven’t been able to move forward. But I can live with this experience.”

“It was a chapter in my life, and I’m thankful and grateful that I got out of there, but I’m not stuck on it,” he said. “I don’t want to always be the ‘former hostage who was rescued.'”