Hamas hostage Mia Schem on how she survived captivity — and freedom — after October 7

Mia Schem spoke at a Toronto event on July 28, 2026 that was organized by Tribe of Nova Canada. She described how she was taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7 terror attack. Photo by Dave Gordon /Postmedia

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Mia Schem became one of the most recognizable faces of the October 7 hostage crisis after she was the first hostage shown in a Hamas video that received international attention. During the 2023 terror attack on Israel, the then 21-year-old Schem, and her friend Elia Toledano, had hurriedly driven away from the Nova music festival when the “red alert” sirens rang out, as rockets from Gaza flew above. They thought driving away would keep them from harm.

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For Schem, a French-Israeli tattoo artist, the morning of terror remains agonizingly present.

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After twenty minutes on the road, they came upon an ambush. “Bullets were flying over our heads,” she told attendees at a Toronto event on July 28 that was organized by Tribe of Nova Canada.

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“Then they shot at us. The car lost control, flipped over and stopped. The doors were locked. We realized we couldn’t get out, so we got out from the windows. The moment I landed on the ground, I was shot at point blank range.”

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She painted the vivid picture of the scene: of pieces of her right hand “flying into the air,” of burning cars, scattered bodies, parts of bodies, and the split-second decision that forced her to “walk toward the terrorists,” because she believed it was her only chance to survive. “I was dragged by my hair into a truck with seven Hamas monsters,” she said at the talk.

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Schem was initially held in a Gaza home, and later moved into Hamas’s tunnel system and kept in a small cage. She recalled, “they treated me like an animal. They didn’t give me any medicine, any treatment, nothing.” She was held for 55 days, and released Nov. 30, 2023. Toledano’s body returned to Israel Dec. 15, 2023.

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In November 2024, when there were still about a hundred hostages held in Gaza, she addressed the United Nations Security Council, telling them that Nova was “a bloodbath,” where “hundreds of young men and women were shot, dismembered, and brutally kidnapped.”

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She asked: “What good are your resolutions, your debates, your empty promises, if the sick, elderly, mothers and their children are left to rot in the terror tunnels?” Since her return home, and multiple surgeries, Schem has said that her story is “a story about choosing to find light, even in the darkest moments,” she told the Toronto crowd. “I choose gratitude. Gratitude for the simple things. For waking up every morning. For breathing. For being able to hug my family. To be with my family.”

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Dave Gordon spoke to Schem exclusively for National Post. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

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What feels most important for people to understand about your experience?

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The most important thing I want people to understand is captivity didn’t end the day I came home. My body came back, but part of my heart and soul is still there. Every day I make the choice to get up and keep going, to live. I don’t want people to remember me only as a hostage. I want them to remember me as a woman who chose life after everything I went through.