Polish-Israeli Hamas hostage Alex Dancyg confirmed dead

Alex Dancyg, a Polish-born Israeli Holocaust historian who was among those abducted by Hamas on 7 October 2023, has been confirmed as dead by the Israeli authorities.

Dancyg, a dual citizen who regularly returned to Poland to teach about the Holocaust and promote Polish-Israeli relations, was one of two Hamas hostages confirmed as dead today by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

“Alex [Dancyg] and Yagev [Buchshtab] were brutally abducted into Gaza and their bodies are still being held by Hamas,” wrote the IDF. “The confirmation of their deaths comes after thorough intelligence review and expert committee approval.”

“The circumstances of their death in Hamas captivity are being examined by all professional authorities,” added the IDF. The Jerusalem Post reports that the IDF admits it is likely the pair were killed mistakenly by Israeli forces during military operations in Khan Yunis.

In March, Hamas claimed that Dancyg and Buchshtab had been killed by Israeli airstrikes. However, Israel has not confirmed their deaths until now.

“We are deeply saddened by the death of Alex Dancyg, a man of peace and friendship who made a huge contribution to Polish-Jewish dialogue,” wrote Poland’s foreign ministry today. “We will continue to demand the unconditional release of all those detained in Gaza.”

Dancyg was born in Warsaw in 1948 to parents who had survived the Holocaust under the fake Polish surname of Danecki.

Dancyg’s sister Edith, who was born during the war, was saved thanks to a Polish woman, Maria Assanowicz, who sheltered her in her home while Dancyg’s parents were in hiding nearby. In 1982, Assanowicz was honoured by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations for risking her life to help Edith.

In 1957, the Dancyg family migrated to Israel. Alex Dancyg later said that at the time he did “not associate myself with being a Jew. I was a Pole. I, Oleś [a Polish nickname for Alexander] Dancyg, walking around Warsaw, was 100% Polish. The word ‘Jew’ appeared consciously only in Israel, when I started learning, started reading books”.

Dancyg went on to serve in the IDF, obtain a degree in history and become active in the left-wing Zionist Hashomer Hatzair youth movement.

In the 1990s, he began working for Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, where he became involved in Israeli study tours to Poland. Dancyg taught teachers and students from both Israel and Poland about the Holocaust and was an active advocate for Polish-Israeli dialogue.

In 2007, Dancyg was awarded Poland’s Silver Cross of Merit by President Lech Kaczyński. Last year, after he had been taken hostage by Hamas, Dancyg was awarded the title of “Man of Reconciliation” by the Polish Council of Christians and Jews.

The Nożyk Synagogue in Warsaw also granted him the Jan Karski Eagle Award, which was collected by Dancyg’s son, Yuval.

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“Alex Dancyg was a Jew, serving his nation and the state of Israel, who never stopped being a Pole,” said Alfred Wierzbicki, a Polish Catholic priest and friend of Dancyg, at the ceremony.

“The violence that the terrorists are inflicting on him strikes at the extraordinary nobility thanks to which Alex won over and brought so many people closer to him,” added Wierzbicki.

The priest noted that Dancyg had “repeatedly expressed his understanding for the Palestinian cause” and “supported the right of the Palestinians to have their own state”.

A mural in Warsaw painted after Dancyg’s abduction, calling him an “ambassador of dialogue” (photo credit: Mateusz Opasiński/Wikimedia Commons, under CC BY-SA 4.0)

In response to today’s news, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw expressed its “great pain” at the confirmation of Dancyg’s death.

“We are devastated by the announcement on the death of Alex Dancyg, kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on October 7 and held in Gaza,” wrote Israel’s ambassador to Poland, Yacov Livne. “Alex, born in Poland, did much to strengthen Israeli-Polish relations.”

Last year, another Polish citizen, humanitarian worker Damian Soból, died in Gaza as a result of the Israeli air strike on a World Central Kitchen (WCK) convoy. The incident sparked a diplomatic row between the two countries after Livne initially refused to apologise and accused some Polish politicians of antisemitism.

Main image credit: Brama Grodzka ‐ Teatr NN

Agata Pyka

Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.