Delegations from all over the world landed in Poland over the weekend to participate in the annual March of the Living. Around 7,000 people are expected to follow fifty Holocaust survivors on Tuesday, Holocaust Remembrance Day, as they walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau.
Among the small group of elderly survivors, many of whom were children during WWII, ten were able to fly from Israel, despite Hezbollah still firing rockets at civilians and negotiations between the US and Iran seeming to be on shaky grounds.
“I’d walk here if I had to,” one-hundred-year-old Holocaust survivor Dorit Carmeli told reporters during a Sunday press conference.
Born in Budapest, Carmeli was one of the Jewish children saved thanks to Swedish ambassador Raoul Wallenberg, who established safe-houses for Jews in the Nazi-controlled Hungarian capital.
“I see how important it is to tell the next generation about those who were murdered"
“I am one of the remaining few who lived through the Holocaust," 94-year-old Naftali Fürst told reporters, “I must speak for them.”
Fürst had been attending March of the Living events for the past two decades.
“I see how important it is to tell the next generation about those who were murdered, to pass this knowledge onwards,” he said.
Amsterdam-born survivor Hannah Yakin spoke about her father’s effort to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust by providing so-called ‘Aryan Papers’, fake documents marking the bearer as a non-Jew. Those who obtained them had a chance to escape Nazi-controlled Europe.
Maariv reporter Josh Aronson exclaimed, “You saved my grandfather!”
He then shared with Yakin and those present how his grandfather, 18-year-old cantor Aron Aronson, received fake documents from her father. Under his new identity as an opera singer, he was able to leave for Switzerland.
The March on Tuesday aims to raise awareness of the surge of worldwide antisemitism and encourage world leaders to take the necessary steps to protect Jewish communities.
Holocaust survivors will march alongside Eva Wietzen, a survivor of the Sydney Bondi Beach massacre, and Yoni Finley, who was wounded during the Yom Kippur shooting at Manchester’s Heaton Park synagogue.
The two will light a ceremonial torch calling to combat antisemitism in the presence of a delegation of 130 law enforcement officers from all over the world, the officers will then light a torch as well, marking their resolve to defend Jewish communities from violence and hate.
Agam Berger and Omri Miran, who were held hostage by Hamas in Gaza after the October 7 attack, will join Warsaw Jewish Ghetto survivor Irene Shashar to light a torch honoring the State of Israel during the closing event.
International March of the Living President Phyllis Greenberg Heideman said that this year, when "Israel stands firm against those seeking its destruction, while waves of antisemitism intensify worldwide," the March "takes on even greater significance."
By marching in Poland, she said, Holocaust survivors instill a spirit of "pride and resilience for the State of Israel and the entire Jewish people."
