April 28, 2022 – Members of the Israeli delegation to the Kochav Meir Field Hospital in Western Ukraine held a memorial service on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, at a killing field near the field hospital.

A delegation of medical personnel at the Kochav Meir Field Hospital in Ukraine, headed by Deputy Director of Rambam Health Care Campus Dr. Michal Mekel, is completing its stint at the hospital today. Just before their return to Israel, the members of the current delegation held several events to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, taking place today.

The hospital works in collaboration with the local Jewish community, and community representatives shared the town’s centuries-old Jewish history with the hospital staff. Delegation members gathered last night in the town’s Jewish cemetery, next to a modest monument marking the killing field where thousands of the area’s Jewish residents were murdered. On the eve of World War II, the number of Jewish residents was about 55% of the total population, which was 2,548 at the time. By the end of 1942, the town was declared “Jew-free.”

Dr. Mekel said, “The place where we are standing was once the Jewish cemetery in the town of Mostyska. Like many cemeteries on Ukrainian soil, this cemetery is not identified as a Jewish cemetery, because there are no Jews left to preserve this memory. Here, next to this modest monument, stands a memorial for the Jews of Mostyska and Rudnyky who were massacred here, right here, in a ditch behind this wide lawn. Here, their bodies are buried. We must bear the memory of the Holocaust, get to know these places, and commemorate their memory in the hearts of the survivors, the relatives of the murdered, and the Jewish people.”

The delegation members then gathered for a special memorial event to listen to the moving story of Maria Liptek, 60, a resident of Ukraine – the granddaughter of “righteous among the nations” who hid Jews in their home during World War II, endangering their own lives to do so. Maria became aware of the presence of the Israeli hospital and felt the need to reveal her story to the members of the delegation as a kind of personal closure.

To watch a video of Dr. Mekel’s speech (in Hebrew), click here.

In the photo: Delegation members at the Israeli field hospital commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day with local Jewish community representatives.

Photography courtesy of Rambam Health Care Campus.