A delegation of 30 youth volunteers with Magen David Adom (MDA) recently took part in the organization’s annual mission visiting Holocaust memorial sites in Poland ahead of Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.
During the trip, the delegation from MDA’s Youth Organization toured the concentration and death camps in Treblinka, Majdanek, Plaszów and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The MDA delegation held a special ceremony at Block 10 in the Auschwitz concentration camp, where Nazi doctors examined Jewish prisoners, to commemorate the victims.
The group also visited gravesites and memorials in Poland, including the cemeteries in the Jewish city of Kielce, where more than 40 people were murdered in a pogrom in July 1946.
MDA holds the mission for staff, adult and youth volunteers to educate the next generation and work to ensure that the atrocities are never forgotten.
Among the members of the delegation was MDA youth volunteer Nicole Beiser, whose brother, Cpl. Nick Beiser, was kidnapped by Hamas in the terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and was later found deceased during a recovery operation by the Israel Defense Forces.
“It was important for me to go on the trip to understand more about what happened there to the Jewish people,” she said. “My great-grandfather was in the Red Army and helped liberate the camps. Seeing this place with my own eyes was very challenging. It’s hard to believe that such horrors actually occurred. We visited the children’s cemetery; it’s hard to imagine that these things happened to little children.”
She continued: “This journey matured me. My older brother Nick, of blessed memory, was killed in the Swords of Iron War. He wanted so much to participate in the journey to Poland, but didn’t make it. I felt like I was doing it for him, too.”
Daniel Gerit, a member of the mission and an MDA youth first-aid volunteer, said that “there were many powerful, moving and sad moments on the trip, but the ceremony we held in Auschwitz touched me the most. Standing in the place where doctors used their professional knowledge to cause suffering was truly sobering. As a teenager who volunteers at MDA, an organization that sanctifies life and human dignity, I felt the true essence behind this mission—a profound reminder to bear witness to the truth and enduring history. I am sure that what we saw on this trip isn’t even a small fraction of the horrors that occurred here.”
The manager of MDA’s Carmel Region Volunteers, Hagai Colton, who accompanied the mission, said that “it is extremely symbolic that our teenage volunteers, who dedicate their time to humanitarian activities, are today wearing MDA’s Star of David emblem at the sites where our Jewish brothers were murdered.”
Adding to the organization’s reasoning behind the mission, MDA director general, Eli Bin, said: “There is nothing today, in Poland, nor anywhere else, that can fully illustrate the terrible atrocities that took place during the Holocaust. Despite this, MDA delegations, adults and youth, go out every year to bear witness and represent the miracle that is Israel on Polish soil. MDA, as an organization that saves lives and is the leading humanitarian organization in Israel, sets itself the goal of teaching youth that we must confront—and not forget—the horrors that are happening around us.”