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Participants will hold the dramatic symbolic march from Auschwitz, the largest death camp built by the Nazis during WWII, to Birkenau on ‘Yom Hashoah” or Holocaust Remembrance Day in commemoration of the death marches that took place towards the end of WWII.
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JERUSALEM (EJP)---Around 10,000 people, many of them youngsters from around the world, are to gather in Poland on May 1 to mark the 10th anniversary of the March of the Living.
They will hold the dramatic symbolic march from Auschwitz, the largest death camp built by the Nazis during WWII, to Birkenau on ‘Yom Hashoah” or Holocaust Remembrance Day in commemoration of the death marches that took place towards the end of the war.
At least 1.1 million Jews died in Auschwitz.
The annual march symbolizes the death marches that took place when the Nazis began emptying the camps and forcing prisoners to walk hundreds of kilometres in freezing weather with little food.
Thousands died and those who lagged behind or fell were shot.
One-third of the march’s participants are non-Jewish, hailing from countries such as Austria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Japan and Morocco.
“The Holocaust is not only a Jewish issue but rather a universal horror. Let us lzearn from the past so that a more tolerant society will evolve for te benefit of all mankind,” David Machlis, vice chairman of March of the Living International, the organization whose goal is for young people to learn the lessons of the Holocaust and to lead the Jewish people into the future vowing ‘Never Again.’
From Poland, over 5,000 marchers will fly directly to Israel to attend in Jerusalem Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day and the state's Independence Day.
Israel celebrates in May the 60th anniversary of its foundation.
"These three days, where the participants witness both the destruction of European Jewry and the rebirth and renaissance of the Jewish people in the State of Israel, are a potent antidote to assimilation and alienation amongst young Diaspora Jews,"Machlis said.
