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The 18th March of the Living
About 6 thousand young Jews from 55 countries around the world and about a thousand Poles joined in the March of the Living, in tribute to and commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust, on Tuesday. As is the tradition, the March of the Living started at the gate of the Auschwitz I site, with its inscription Arbeit macht frei (“work will set you free”).
The participants marched over three kilometers to the site of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp. They included Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom of Israel, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Borkowski of Poland, and Rabbi Meir Lau, the Chief Rabbi of Israel and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Yad Vashem Memorial Institute.
“The main purpose of the March is commemorating the victims of the Holocaust and teaching history. We want to teach so that the Holocaust will never happen again, and to tell young people that interpersonal relations should be based on tolerance and peace,” said Aharon Tamir, the director of the March. “That is why we invite people of other faiths from all over the world to the March, including, of course, a great many Poles. During the week-long program in Poland, we also organize many meetings between youth groups. We must work and learn together to fight for a better world for future generations,” Tamir added.
The signal for the start of the March was the blowing of the shofar, the ram’s horn. The sound is a symbolic appeal to God for mercy. The main March of the Living ceremonies took place at the monument on the grounds of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau site, near the ruins of crematoria and gas chambers 2 and 3.
Estera, a young woman from Ustroń, Poland, was attending the March for the first time. “I know how hard it is to visit this place,” she said, “but it is nevertheless essential to do so. And for not only Jews, but also Poles and other Europeans, to come here so that they can see this place and know what really happened here, so that it penetrates to the depths of their hearts.”
In his address to the participants in the March, Jan Borkowski said that “half of the number of murdered Jews were citizens of the Polish Republic. Almost the entire Polish Jewish community was killed. This place is a place of shared loss for Jews and Poles. Our presence in this place is a sign that the Jewish people has survived, that the state of Israel exists and protects its citizens, and that Poles and Jews together weep for their common history, which was broken off by the Holocaust.”
The Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, was recited at the conclusion of the ceremony. Participants in the March left dozens of wooden tablets, symbolizing matzevot (Jewish gravestones), on the railroad tracks and the unloading ramp where the Nazis carried out the selection of Jews transported there from all over Europe.
The ceremony in Oświęcim is part of an international educational project held in Poland and Israel. “The important thing for us is that the participants in the project learn about the many centuries of the history of the Polish Jews, that they learn what Poland meant to Jewish life and tradition. For centuries, it was the homeland of many Jews,” said Tamir. “For almost a week, the groups visit synagogues, cemeteries, shtetls, and sites connected with the Holocaust. They also see the new Poland, and meet with Polish students. The second part of the program takes place in Israel, where the young people can see the state that was founded 61 years ago.”
The March is organized by March of the Living International. It has been held since 1988 and traditionally takes place on Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom Hashoah), which falls on the 27th of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar. Beginning in 1996, the March of the Living has taken place annually. The largest March took place in 2005, when 20 thousand people took part. A total of more than 120 thousand people have participated in the March of the Living.
