Thousands join Holocaust remembrance march at Auschwitz
WARSAW, Poland — Thousands of people assembled Tuesday at the former site of Auschwitz for the March of the Living, a yearly Holocaust remembrance march that falls this year on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Participants in the solemn event included Holocaust survivors who lived through the agony of Auschwitz or one of the other death camps where Nazi Germany sought to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe, and came close to doing so.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella spoke at the event, warning that the ideas of the 1930s are reappearing “at a time when Russia’s inhuman aggression against Ukraine is still raging.” He callled the memory of the Holocaust “an eternal warning that cannot be ignored.”
“Hate, prejudice, racism, extremism, antisemitism, indifference, delusion and hunger for power lurk, constantly challenging the consciences of individuals and nations,” said Mattarella, whose nation under dictator Benito Mussolini was allied with Adolf Hitler’s Germany during the war.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
Israelis and people from over the world on Tuesday take part in the annual March of the Living, a trek between two former Nazi-run death camps to mourn victims of the Holocaust and celebrate the existence of the Jewish state of Israel, in Oswiecim, Poland.
Some attendees, including people from Israel and the United States, came face to face for the first time with something that has long been part of their psyche: the watchtowers, remnants of gas chambers and the huge piles of shoes, suitcases and other objects the victims brought with them on their final journey.
German forces established Auschwitz after they invaded and occupied Poland, and killed more than 1.1 million people there, most of them Jews but also Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and others. In all, about 6 million European Jews died during the Holocaust.
Elderly survivors, some draped in Israel’s blue and white flag, assembled under the gate with the cynical words “Arbeit Macht Frei” — Work Sets One Free — ahead of the march.
Michal Dyjuk, Associated Press
Holocaust survivors and former Auschwitz inmates participate in the annual March of the Living, a trek between two former Nazi-run death camps, on Tuesday in Oswiecim, Poland.
The March of the Living, which takes place each year on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, begins at that gate and leads to Birkenau, the large camp 2 miles away where Jews from across Europe were transported by train and murdered in gas chambers.
The event, while somber, is also a celebration of survival and the state of Israel, and some participants clapped and sang as they prepared to march near the gate.
Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, the march president, said the young participants would bear the responsibility for carrying forward the memory of the witnesses.
“They will be the voice of those who no longer have voice once they see and understand what happened in the past,” she said.
Michal Dyjuk
People gather Tuesday to participate in the annual March of the Living, a trek between two former Nazi-run death camps to mourn victims of the Holocaust and celebrate the existence of the Jewish state of Israel, in Oswiecim, Poland.
Some of the participants will travel the next day to Warsaw for observances marking the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, which will be attended by the presidents of Poland, Germany and Israel.
On Tuesday, Polish Culture Minister Piotr Glinski attended a ceremony symbolically marking a new stage in the development of a museum scheduled to open in three years, the Warsaw Ghetto Museum. Officials buried a “time capsule” containing memorabilia and a message to future generations on the grounds of a former children’s hospital which will house the museum.
The revolt was the largest single act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust and remains a potent national symbol for Israel.
Oded Balilty, Associated Press
People walk along a bridge lit with a billboard showing a yellow Star of David that reads "Jude," Jew in German, resembling the one Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany, during the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday in Ramat Gan, Israel.
A third of the world’s Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Israel was established in the aftermath in 1948, and hundreds of thousands of survivors fled to the Jewish state.
In Israel itself, activities ground to a halt for a nationwide moment of silence Tuesday in remembrance of Holocaust victims as a two-minute siren wailed across the country. Vehicles and pedestrians stopped on streets and highways as Israelis stood, heads bowed, in solemn remembrance.
The somber day is also marked by ceremonies and memorials at schools and community centers. Restaurants and cafes shutter, and TV and radio stations play Holocaust-themed programs.
Official observances started Monday evening with a ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem as six survivors, including one of the few remaining survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, lit torches for the memory of the 6 million killed.
Israel’s figurehead president called for national unity after months of protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned judicial overhaul that divided the country.
