Famed Israeli singer David D’Or on Thursday gave the first-ever public performance of a special song written by a fallen IDF soldier, at the March of the Living in Auschwitz on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Yoram Dori, adviser to the March of the Living management, spoke to Arutz Sheva about the song which D’Or sang with his celebrated four-octave range voice.

“At the March of the Living in 1994 a high-school student from kibbutz Ramat Rachel named Yair Engel took part,” explained Dori.

“Yair, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, experienced a dramatic change during his visit to Auschwitz – he decided to change his plans of serving in a non-combat role (in the IDF) and to continue investing efforts in basketball, and instead he volunteered to Shayetet 13,” he said, indicating an elite naval commando unit.

Tragically, in 1996 after roughly a year of military service, Engel died in a diving accident together with his friend Matan Polivoda.

After Engel’s death, his parents Yonit and Jucha (Yosef) found a notebook with two poems that he wrote in his room.

Yoram Dori at the time worked together with Jucha as members of former President Shimon Peres’s staff, at which point he heard about the poem “Six Million Brothers” that Yair wrote.

Last year when he worked as a spokesperson for the March of the Living, Dori recalled the song and he asked composer Moshe Yosef to write accompanying music to bring it to life.

Yair’s father Jucha asked David D’Or to sing the song, and it was decided that it would be performed for the first time at the March of the Living this year.

Jucha, Yonit, their four children Yael, Yoav, Ya’ara and Yifat, together with their first grandchild Niri, were present for the heartmoving performance.