From Reuters:
“Young Jews march in Poland to
remember Holocaust victims”
Thousands of young Jews from
around the world joined Holocaust survivors and politicians Thursday for an
annual Holocaust remembrance march in southern Poland that focuses on fighting
anti-Semitism and hatred. About 10,000 marchers carrying Israeli flags and “Say
NO to Antisemitism” banners took part in the annual March of the Living, which
follows a 3-kilometer (1.8 mile) route between the two parts of the former
Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp operated by German Nazis. At the former site of
Birkenau, where Jews from around Europe were brought by train and killed in gas
chambers during 1942-45, participants placed wooden signs with the names of
relatives who died in the Holocaust on remaining train tracks. The march takes
place every year on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. It began in 1988 as
part of an education program for young Jews. Six United States ambassadors,
including Ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman and Georgette Mosbacher, the
ambassador to Poland, were among the international representatives who
attended. Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dancila and Poland’s agriculture
minister also walked in the march. An estimated 1.1 million people died at
Auschwitz-Birkenau during Nazi Germany’s brutal World War II occupation of
Poland, most of them European Jews but also Polish resistance members, Roma and
Russian prisoners of war.
^ Today's "March of The
Living" is the 31st year of the event where youth (mostly Jewish, but in
recent years many non-Jews) from all over the world travel to Poland and many
then to Israel. It is in response on the Nazis'
Death Marches (the forced evacuation of millions of people from the
concentration and death camps to other camps before the Allies could liberate
them. Countless numbers were murdered by the guards on the road and their
bodies left wherever they died.) The main part of "The March
of the Living" is at Auschwitz where they see how the Germans murdered
innocent men, women and children. Holocaust survivors (whose numbers are
dwindling every year) tell about their experiences. ^
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