Ofer Calderon, who returned from Hamas captivity in February, recounted in his first interview since his release the trauma of believing his children had been killed in the October 7, 2025 massacre and then discovering that two of them were also being held hostage in Gaza.

In the interview with Channel 12 broadcast Friday, Calderon also described how he went above ground for just three hours in all his time in Gaza, was in tunnels with top Hamas officials, including Yahya Sinwar, and was at one point in a tunnel attacked by the IDF.

Calderon said he initially thought his entire family in Nir Oz had died in the massacre — including his 16-year-old daughter Sahar and 12-year-old son Erez. However, three weeks into captivity, Calderon met fellow captive Rimon Kirsht, who told him she had been held together with Sahar.

He said he begged his captor to let him see his daughter and was taken to the apartment where she was being held. But they were forced back underground when rocket fire began in the area, Calderon said.

Those three hours were the only time he spent above ground during his entire captivity, he said.

Calderon and his daughter were then held together with three other hostages in a tunnel in the area of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. There, Calderon said, he gave the regional Hamas commander a list of names, written in English, to see if those people were alive. The commander told Calderon that Erez was alive in a hospital above ground.

“We relayed a message to him that Sahar and I are okay,” said Calderon. “He of course asked to have his dad come to him, and was told that’s impossible.”

Calderon and Sahar were taken to another location where there was a television, on which they happened to see Hadas Calderon, his ex-wife and the children’s mother, speaking about the hostages — proof she was alive.

“Sahar and I really cried,” said Calderon. “It was bizarre — you’re underground and you see her there in Israel, talking.”

He also learned only two weeks before his eventual release that another of his children Rotem, then 19, was still alive, from a televised speech in which Ofer’s cousin Yifat Zailer mentioned that all of Ofer’s children were waiting for their father.

Until he learned Rotem survived the Hamas onslaught, Calderon said, he suffered from nightmares of “tombstones with his name [on them], horrible things like that. But somewhere inside I said to myself that he’s alive.”

Erez and Sahar were released in the weeklong truce-hostage deal of November 2023, in which Hamas freed 105 women and children in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.

At the time, Calderon said, his captors told him he would be released soon, and he believed them.

“That’s it, they got out the kids, got out the young women, now is adults — that’s what the Arabs told me. And it didn’t happen,” he said.

“On television, I saw Erez and Sahar getting out, and I cried,” he said. “Of course it was a relief that the kids were going home. But I was crying also about what would happen later… I realized that I’m not going, and I realized that worse than that, the real war was actually starting now.”

After his children were released, Calderon was taken to a new tunnel, where he was held along Yarden Bibas when the latter was told his wife Shiri and two young sons Ariel and Kfir had been killed in captivity, according to Channel 12.

In that tunnel, Calderon said, he and Bibas were visited by Sinwar, the Hamas chief who was killed by the IDF in October 2024.

“I recognized him immediately. He was with another [terrorist] I also recognized,” said Calderon, adding that Sinwar was carrying with him a fax machine that he used to communicate without being intercepted.

“I asked him: ‘What’s going to happen now? Are the [ceasefire-hostage] talks over?’ And he said: ‘The situation’s gone backwards a bit, patience, another month and it’ll be okay.’ That’s what he said, a month.”

Calderon was soon separated from Bibas and taken to another tunnel which was hit in an IDF strike while he was there with four other hostages, according to Channel 12. The tunnel was 70 centimeters (27.5 inches) wide and had “horrible sanitary conditions,” Calderon said.

“We were lying there for six weeks, two months, and there were awful explosions,” he said. “Death was always present.”

Over the coming months until his release, Calderon was given only salty water to drink and a thin piece of pita a day to eat.

“I would cut in in half, put half in my pocket to snack on later. I ate it grain-by-grain,” he said. “You feel like you’re in Holocaust stories.”

Calderon, 54, is an avid cyclist and said in the interview that he often thought about biking when he was in captivity. “This sport — there is no greater freedom,” he said. Calderon’s biking group and the Lehosheet Yad (Lend a Hand) charity have launched a fundraiser to support his and his family’s rehabilitation, he said on Instagram on Friday.

Calderon was released as part of the last ceasefire-hostage deal’s first phase, in which Hamas released 33 women, children, civilian men over 50 and those deemed “humanitarian cases,” in exchange for some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, including at least 270 serving life terms in connection with the murders of dozens of Israelis.

The deal’s 42-day first phase expired on March 2 amid Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to negotiate the second, which would have required a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza — a red line for the premier’s far-right coalition partners.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip still hold 50 hostages, including 49 of those abducted on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.

At least 28 hostages have been confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said.