Thousands of people gathered Tuesday at the former site of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. They came for the March of the Living, a yearly Holocaust remembrance march.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella spoke at the march. During the war, Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini allied his country with Adolf Hitler’s Germany.
Mattarella warned that the ideas of the 1930s were reappearing “at a time when Russia’s inhuman aggression against Ukraine is still raging.” He called the memory of the Holocaust “an eternal warning that cannot be ignored.”
The March of the Living takes place each year on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. The march began at the Auschwitz gate and led to Birkenau, a large camp two miles away. Jews from across Europe were sent there by train. Most were killed. In all, about six million European Jews died during the Holocaust.
Participants in the march included Holocaust survivors who lived through the agony of Auschwitz or another camp. Elderly survivors, some draped in Israel’s blue-and-white flag, assembled under the gate emblazoned with the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Sets One Free) before the march.
The event is somber. But it is also a celebration of survival and the state of Israel. Some participants clapped and sang as they prepared to march.
This year’s march also fell on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
On April 19, 1943, Nazi troops tried to deport Jewish ghetto residents in Warsaw, Poland. Jewish revolutionaries rebelled. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the largest single act of Jewish resistance during World War II. It was also the first major revolt against Nazi Germany. By May 16, Nazi troops crushed the rebellion. The uprising remains a potent national symbol for Israel.
Some participants of the march traveled to Warsaw for Wednesday’s observances of the uprising. Presidents of Poland, Germany, and Israel attended that event.
Polish Culture Minister Piotr Glinski attended a ceremony marking a new stage in the development of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum. That museum is scheduled to open in three years.
Officials buried a time capsule containing memorabilia and a message to future generations on the grounds of a former children’s hospital. That site will house the new museum.
Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, March of the Living president, believes young participants bear the responsibility for carrying forward the memory of the witnesses. She says, “They will be the voice of those who no longer have voice once they see and understand what happened in the past.”
“Let us now build an altar . . . to be a witness between us and you, and between our generations after us, that we do perform the service of the Lord in His presence." — Joshua 22:26-27
(Holocaust survivors and former Auschwitz inmates participate in the annual March of the Living in Poland on April 18, 2023. The march is a trek between two former Nazi-run death camps. AP/Michal Dyjuk)
For more about the Holocaust, see The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom in our Recommended Reading.
