After October 7, IDF commanders visit Poland for Holocaust lessons and battlefield reflections

He witnessed the massacre in kibbutzim and communities in the Gaza border region. He then took his course trainees on a memorial journey to Poland to commemorate those who were killed in the Holocaust.

Keren is a track commander in the Field Company Commanders Course, responsible for training the tactical command echelon of the Ground Forces. On Oct. 7, he was serving as the operations officer of Unit 474, the Golan Brigade.

Keren is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. His grandfather survived four labor camps, giving this trip deep personal significance for Keren. He said he had visited Poland once before as an IDF soldier, “but this time, [he] also carries the responsibility of being a father and a husband,” explaining that this gives the journey “an entirely different dimension.”

Keren spoke about what taking this journey now, with his rank and position, meant for him. He explained that he returns there as a witness and senior IDF officer, committed to training the next generation so that such an event will never happen again.

“The combination of the elements of my identity – deputy head of the delegation, track commander, father, husband, and someone who lost friends in the most recent war – gives this journey a deep and profoundly personal meaning.”

Dahan also has a family connection to the Holocaust. His wife’s grandmother was a Holocaust survivor.

He explained the importance of having a Jewish state that can defend itself, saying that his wife’s grandmother “would tell us, with a moving look in her eyes, ‘You don’t understand what a privilege you have that you can be fighters and possess weapons.’

“I’m excited to see young soldiers, weapons holders, and through this a little, just a little, understand how much privilege we have to be in this line and to be sufficient and self-sufficient and have the courage to prepare ourselves and walk around with an IDF uniform and an Israeli flag,” he said.

Both commanders emphasized that this is the underlying message of the journey to Poland: Although the Jewish people were once helpless, they now have a state that can and does defend its people, and something like the Holocaust will never be allowed to happen again.

Dahan brought an unusual item with him on the trip – a copy of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf found in a house belonging to a Hamas commander.

“During the battles, we found in the children’s room a Mein Kampf book written in Arabic with a book-style work by his [the commander’s] daughter attached to it, which basically tells and describes the Nazi ideology and its connection to [Hamas’s] ideology in 2023.”

He spoke about the significance of this discovery and its wider implications, noting that Nazi ideology is not a thing of the past but a continuous, present issue, saying, “The same evil Nazi ideology that Jews faced in the past, and the same perception, continues to grip us even in this era in which we live.”

When asked if he believes there is a clear connection between the Holocaust and the Israel-Hamas War, Dahan’s answer was “Yes.”

He said, “The enemy has changed its flag, changed its name, changed its face, but the ultimate evil that hides behind these actions is the same evil.”

The officer expanded, “[It is] the same evil that wants to destroy us as Jewish people, wherever we are in the world.”

That is why he brought the book with him – to remember that although the ideology may be the same, the Jewish people are no longer victims. They have a state and with it the power and means to fight against this ideology and continue to thrive.

Keren emphasized that he did not want to draw any comparison between the events of the Holocaust and Oct. 7, but he noted that, much like Dahan, he sees “a conceptual connection that cannot be ignored.”

He made it clear that any attempts to compare the two events risked diminishing both and emphasized that it is important to center ideological links rather than equivalence.

“It is impossible to understand the depth of the rupture of Oct. 7 and the significance of shaping Jewish-Israeli identity today without learning from and deeply internalizing the memory of the Holocaust,” Keren said.

He explained that visiting Poland after Oct. 7 changed the emotional weight of the journey for him, saying that “the significance is [now] multiplied many times over.”

Dahan said that this trip was not the first step in the soldiers’ Holocaust education through the IDF. “We’ve already done it in Israel in the previous workshops that we do together with Yad Vashem. There, we are thorough and in-depth.”

“There was a lot of documentation during the Holocaust, and in general, there is a lot to learn.”

Keren has spent most of his military service in positions dedicated to shaping the next generation; he has trained combat soldiers, junior officers, and company commanders. He described feeling “both the weight of responsibility and the privilege of passing on knowledge and experience to the next generation.”

He emphasized the duty that the army has “to instill Holocaust remembrance in commanders and soldiers of the IDF,” describing how “on this journey, commanders develop an additional and deeper layer in their perception of themselves as leaders.”

The officer explained that the trip develops “a sense of mission” in the next generation of field commanders. “When you stand on Polish soil and realize that only a few decades ago there was no one there to defend our people, a personal promise is etched within you: ‘On my watch, this will not happen again.’”

Discussing those stories of Jewish heroism during the Holocaust, Dahan highlighted how “sometimes Jewish heroism was in the form of rebellions and fighting, whether it was in the Krakow ghetto uprising or the Bialystok ghetto uprising, or in dozens of other rebellions that were carried out in many other places, and sometimes it was in the heroism in the everyday life of a father who would rally his cause for someone else.”

He said that the Jewish heroism now is similar to the heroism during the Holocaust in that it is “in the small things that we really feel today in Israeli society.”

He spoke about the wives of reserve soldiers who have to continue living life while their husbands are away and about the civilian efforts to help soldiers, calling it “a collective effort that shows heroism is not just in the battles of fighting but really on the broad sides, and this is something that is very evident in this trip.”

Keren explained, “When [the commanders] see with their own eyes what happens in the absence of a state and a protective army, they return from the journey with the understanding that their life’s mission is to ensure our continued existence.

“They transform from ‘visitors’ into ‘witnesses’ and feel a deep commitment to pass the torch and the memory on to their subordinates and to the frameworks under their command.