A young girl in Israel has a new “big sister” thanks to the IWitness Video Challenge.

Rachelli Seidman, a 10th grader at Ulpanat Amana, a private girls’ high school in Kfar Saba, Israel, was assigned to complete the IWitness Video Challenge as summer homework in her English class. The IWitness Video Challenge invites students to be inspired by the testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides contained in the interactive, educational website IWitness. Students are asked to create positive value in their communities by doing something ordinary (or extraordinary), and then challenged to build a video telling the story about how they contributed to making their communities a better place.

For her community service project, Seidman decided to become a big sister to a Liel, a seven-year-old friend whose father had recently passed away. Seidman wanted to show the connection between Holocaust survivors and a young girl in Israel today who were separated from their parents.

“I had known Liel for a good amount of time and it seemed to connect this struggling young Jewish girl in this country with a different type of struggle as a young girl in the Holocaust, and with my own struggles,” Seidman said. “Seeing the testimonies about having to struggle with family separations inspired me to put together a video connecting the two differences.”

In her video Someone to Talk To, which was chosen as the top video in her class, Seidman shows clips of survivors Tania Kauppila and Ellis Lewin describing the moments they were taken away from their parents during the Holocaust. Inspired to help someone going through a similar experience, Seidman visits Liel once a week to help her with her homework, play games and take her on fun outings.

Seidman says she enjoyed spending time with Liel so much over the summer, she has continued to see her every week since school started. Liel is “wonderful, smart and funny,” she said, and being a big sister to her has meant just as much to her as it did to Liel.

“The memory that stands out the most for me was the first time Liel talked to me about her father since he died,” Seidman said. “Her father was a general in the Israeli army so she took his general cap, put it on, and started telling me about his hobbies.”

Seidman also loves giving Liel advice when she needs it, and enjoyed hearing about Liel’s first crush.

From the testimonies in IWitness, Seidman said she learned to never give up, even during the hardest times. She was proud to hear how the survivors kept their hope for a better future alive.

She said she is very proud to be part of Liel’s life and loves “getting her big hugs.” She said everyone should volunteer to do something good for someone else.

“Whenever I'm with Liel I really feel like her big sister. She inspires me so much, and always makes me laugh,” Seidman said. “This challenge affected me a lot in my life. In seeing how this unique relationship with Liel developed, I learned more about myself. I feel like without Liel I would have been a different person.”