Thousands of Israelis mark ‘Dugo Day,’ eating falafel in Holocaust survivor’s memory

Thousands of Israelis around the country today are marking “Dugo Day” by eating falafel in honor of a Holocaust survivor’s personal celebration of life.

“Dugo Day” was launched 11 years ago to commemorate a tradition begun by David “Dugo” Leitner, who would eat falafel every January 18, the date he and some 66,000 others set out on the Auschwitz death marches in 1945.

Freezing, starving and exhausted, Leitner, 14 at the time, motivated himself to keep going by dreaming about his mother’s bilkalach — small golden buns of bread made in his native Hungary and across Central Europe.

Years later, after Leitner survived and moved to Israel, that memory came rushing back to him when he first encountered falafel at the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem.

“The fried balls immediately took me back to the march — and my mother’s kitchen — and I had two portions one after another,” Leitner told the Srugim website in 2018.

Leitner made it a tradition to eat two portions of falafel every January 18 to celebrate his survival. Later, in his honor, the Testimony House, a small Holocaust education institution in the town of Nir Galim, launched “Operation Dugo” in 2016, encouraging people to eat a falafel on that date and share a photograph on social media with the #OperationDugo hashtag in Hebrew.

Leitner died in 2023, but the event lives on, with schoolchildren, IDF soldiers, youth movements and private individuals continuing the tradition. Many schools have also integrated lessons about Leitner’s life into the day’s curriculum.

Next month, the Israel Postal Company will issue a stamp honoring Leitner as part of a commemorative project, according to Hebrew media reports.

This year also saw a great-grandson, David Amichai, named in Leitner’s honor.