An Israeli hostage describes her time in captivity in harrowing detail.

Mia Schem was held hostage in Gaza for three days as she reportedly underwent surgery for a gunshot wound suffered during Hamas’s attack on Israel. For days, forced to share a room with her captor, she was given no painkillers and had to change her own bandages.

The account of Ms. Schem, who spoke about her 55 days of captivity to two television stations and in a photo essay published in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, has struck a chord in Israel.

It mirrors that of other hostages: a lack of food and water and minimal access to medical care. But her interviews and written accounts, which could not be independently confirmed, have provided the most detailed look at what life was like in captivity. Her family did not agree to an interview with The New York Times.

Ms. Schem, a 21-year-old Israeli French citizen from Shoham, Israel, was kidnapped by Hamas after fleeing the Nova music festival during the October 7 terrorist attack that killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel. Early in the war, the group released a video of her in captivity, the first of one of more than 230 hostages.

In her memories since her release, Ms. Schem describes being held in a family’s home in Gaza, in a room with her captor, and with his wife and children in the adjoining room. Her only time alone was in the bathroom, where she occasionally stuck her tattooed fingers out of the window in the hope of being recognized, she wrote in Yediot Ahronot.

One day, as Ms. Schem struggled with a bun in her hair, her captor approached with a pair of scissors, she wrote. She yelled at him and told him she would handle it herself, which ended up taking her almost two weeks because of her injured arm, she said.

Ms. Schem told Israeli television that her captor’s wife would “bring him food” some days, without bringing anything for Ms. Schem.

“There were days when she wouldn’t let me eat,” Mrs. Schem said.

She told Israeli television that her captor at one point called her to watch television footage of her mother speaking at a press conference, saying he did so “to hurt me,” but that she nonetheless drew from seeing her mother.

On another day, her captor was upset after his friends were killed in an Israeli bombing, she said, adding that she only comforted him to “play the game.” Other times the bombardment was close.

“The windows of the house I was in were broken,” she says.

Ms Schem said that in the last few days before her release, she was taken to tunnels almost 60 meters underground where it was difficult to breathe.

In her hostage video released by Hamas, Ms. Schem begged to go home and described undergoing surgery. She told Israeli television that she had been told to say she was being taken care of.

“You do what you’re told,” she said in describing the video. “You’re afraid of dying.”

Ms. Schem was eventually released in late November during a brief ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Since then, she said, she has had more surgeries because her bone was badly damaged when she was shot.

Now home, she struggles to come to terms with her experiences in Gaza and leaving other hostages behind.

“I can’t get it out of my head,” she told Israeli television.