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19th March of the Living
Several thousand young Jews from all around the world were joined by numerous Polish young people at the nineteenth March of the Living. This year, the event was dedicated to the memory of the one-and-a-half million children who died in the Shoah.
In the wake of the recent disaster involving the Polish government aircraft at Smolensk, near Katyń, black mourning ribbons appeared on many of the Israeli and Polish flags. Before the start of the March, the Ambassador of Israel in Poland, Zvi Rav-Ner, said that the event would also pay tribute this year to the Polish president, Mrs. Kaczyńska, and the victims of the air disaster. “Today, we will march in solidarity with the entire Polish nation,” he said. “President Kaczyński and his wife were friends of Israel and the Jewish people.”
In his remarks, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Director Piotr M.A. Cywiński said: “This is my twelfth March of the Living. I have taken part over the years as a sign of my solidarity with the Jewish people. This year, I want to thank you for your solidarity in this period that is so difficult for us,” he said. He noted that there were Polish officers of Jewish origin among the thousands murdered by the Soviets in Katyń 70 years ago.
The participants in the March observed a minute of silence in tribute to the victims of the air crash.
Sophie Schwarz came to Auschwitz from Austria in order to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. “We read a lot about it,” she said. “I am here today to see it all with my own eyes, in order to be able in some way to imagine what happened here. It is important for this place to exist, so that the coming generations can also know what happened here,” said the young Austrian woman.
Two other women at the March, students in their final year of school in Wągrowiec, Poland, had similar feelings. “We decided to come here to be together with the Jewish people. So many died here. This is also our history. We should learn about it and become knowledgeable,” said Agata.
Her classmate Marzena added that she had always wanted to come here, to see “live” the things she had previously only known through television. “We are going to make an effort to prevent Auschwitz from ever being repeated,” she said.
The ceremony ended with the recitation of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, at the site of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau Nazi German concentration camp. Participants in the March left wooden tablets, bearing the names of victims, on the railroad tracks and the platform where the Nazis carried out the selection of Jews brought here from all over Europe.
March of the Living International organizes the March as a tribute to and commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust. Since 1988, it has traditionally been held on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, which falls on the 27th of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar. So far, a total of more than 120,000 people have attended.
See the video: 19th March of the Living
