This past Friday, high school students gathered during lunch to hear a speaker from Magen David Adom share his experience on October 7. Hillel, a volunteer paramedic, was on call in Sderot, his home town, when the war broke out. During the presentation, he presented the organization and their mission to serve their community; he then spoke about the war and his role in helping the injured.
Hillel from Magen David Adom spoke to students about his story. (T. Herbst)
Magen David Adom is Israel’s national emergency service organization that manages emergency response teams, ambulances, and blood banks. It is run by volunteers from around the country who serve communities from the northern to southern borders of Israel.
For this article, we interviewed students who recounted the presentation and shared their feelings.
Penina Charry, a sophomore, “was surprised to hear that nearly all of [Magen David Adom’s] volunteers are ages 15-18. Here in the US, you usually have to be 17 or older in order to join a volunteer fire department, so it surprised me when he said that a kid my age could be going out and saving lives.”
Hillel volunteers as a paramedic at the local Sderot station, which is located in the South near the Gaza border. Corey Flyer, a junior, tells Hillel’s story of October 7: “He woke up to prepare for his day working for Magen David Adom. That morning, he received red alert notifications, which he explained was nothing out of the ordinary, especially when you live on the border of the Gaza Strip.”
Flyer continued, “[Hillel] soon found out, however, that this was not just an ordinary warning.... He saw several pickup trucks with terrorists shooting from the pickup trucks. He was strictly advised to stay put in his shelter and not go outside. He explained that he could not just stay put when there were several severe injuries. He needed to help.”
Hillel shared his brave decision to go “out of his home and rushed to the emergency service station where there were over twenty injured bodies. The main difficulty was that the highways were closed and the bodies were unable to be transported to the nearby hospital in Ashkelon," Flyer recounted. Hillel and other volunteers who were out fighting, “devised a plan to use the bulletproof ambulance to transport the bodies one by one to the hospital. Six hours later, they had successfully transported all of the bodies to the hospital,” Flyer explained.
Micah Bidner, a junior, shared that Hillel explained that “especially when the war first started, and they evacuated a lot of the areas surrounding the [Gaza] strip, there were a lot of elderly folks who were not necessarily able to evacuate.” Bidner continued to explain that Hillel’s “team ... got food and was able to provide support to these elderly individuals who are not able to move.”
Charry felt that hearing his story “put the impact of the October 7 attacks in perspective.... I think it really made us think about how many people were affected. It also made us feel even more grateful for the people who sacrifice everything just to help someone.”
Penina Charry, a sophomore, “was surprised to hear that nearly all of [Magen David Adom’s] volunteers are ages 15-18. Here in the US, you usually have to be 17 or older in order to join a volunteer fire department, so it surprised me when he said that a kid my age could be going out and saving lives.”
Hillel volunteers as a paramedic at the local Sderot station, which is located in the South near the Gaza border. Corey Flyer, a junior, tells Hillel’s story of October 7: “He woke up to prepare for his day working for Magen David Adom. That morning, he received red alert notifications, which he explained was nothing out of the ordinary, especially when you live on the border of the Gaza Strip.”
Flyer continued, “[Hillel] soon found out, however, that this was not just an ordinary warning.... He saw several pickup trucks with terrorists shooting from the pickup trucks. He was strictly advised to stay put in his shelter and not go outside. He explained that he could not just stay put when there were several severe injuries. He needed to help.”
Hillel shared his brave decision to go “out of his home and rushed to the emergency service station where there were over twenty injured bodies. The main difficulty was that the highways were closed and the bodies were unable to be transported to the nearby hospital in Ashkelon," Flyer recounted. Hillel and other volunteers who were out fighting, “devised a plan to use the bulletproof ambulance to transport the bodies one by one to the hospital. Six hours later, they had successfully transported all of the bodies to the hospital,” Flyer explained.
Micah Bidner, a junior, shared that Hillel explained that “especially when the war first started, and they evacuated a lot of the areas surrounding the [Gaza] strip, there were a lot of elderly folks who were not necessarily able to evacuate.” Bidner continued to explain that Hillel’s “team ... got food and was able to provide support to these elderly individuals who are not able to move.”
Charry felt that hearing his story “put the impact of the October 7 attacks in perspective.... I think it really made us think about how many people were affected. It also made us feel even more grateful for the people who sacrifice everything just to help someone.”
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