For the first time in years, Dr. Yoav Heller is walking the March of the Living without his mentor, Holocaust historian Alex Dancyg — a loss he describes as “a tragic twist of history.”
Dancyg, a lifelong educator and scholar who dedicated himself to preserving Holocaust memory, was killed in Hamas captivity after being abducted during the October 7 attacks. His absence cast a long shadow over this year’s annual march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, held on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.
(Video: Lior Sharon)
“Everything I know about history, especially about Poland and the Holocaust, I learned from Alex,” said Heller, CEO of the Fourth Quarter Movement. “Just last year, I stood in Auschwitz with a group and asked them to pray for his safe return. This year, we know he is not with us. It’s deeply painful.”
Dancyg, who immigrated to Israel from Poland as a child, became one of Israel’s most influential Holocaust educators, training hundreds of guides and shaping how generations of Israelis understood the memory of the Shoah. His death, Heller said, is not only personal — it is symbolic.
“To think that a man who survived and taught the Holocaust his entire life died in the tunnels of Hamas — it’s unbearable,” Heller said. During their visit to Auschwitz, Heller and his group observed a moment of silence in Dancyg’s memory.
Heller is in Poland this year with a diverse delegation that includes members of Christian United Friends of Israel. But the heart of his trip is rooted in remembrance — and in mourning.
When asked whether he sees parallels between the Holocaust and the October 7 attacks, Heller was careful to distinguish between them. “October 7 is not a Holocaust — not in magnitude, not in form,” he said. “But there are Holocaust moments.”
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He described the testimonies of Israeli survivors who hid in closets for hours or watched loved ones killed before their eyes. “For those people, in that moment, there is no difference,” he said. “These moments haunt us. I’ve spent my life resisting Holocaust comparisons — but this time, I can’t ignore them.”
Reflecting on what has — and hasn’t — been learned from history, Heller emphasized the urgent need for unity in Israel and the Jewish world. “We need a strong state, we need to protect every Jew, and we need each other,” he said. “But 77 years after the Holocaust, we’re turning against one another. The polarization is killing us.”
He added: “We have one country, one people. If we fight among ourselves, we’ll be buried next to each other. That should be the loudest message from this march.”