AUSCHWITZ – Standing between the now cold remains of crematoriums two and three, where each day five thousand victims were reduced to ashes during the Holocaust, Shoa survivors, world leaders, and various dignitaries paid their respects on Thursday.
Polish President Andrzej Duda welcomed President Isaac Herzog and said Auschwitz is a “warning sign to all the world.”
Duda stressed that while Auschwitz is very important to the Jewish nation, it is also a site where many Poles died.
Turning to Herzog, Duda said that "we will walk together, the 37th March of the Living, in a symbolic manifestation of life, remembrance, and also a dramatic call - never again."
Herzog thanked Duda and said, “Standing here together, I hope we march together to a shared future built on a common past.”
Returning the hostages
Herzog read from the diary of Polish-Jewish educator Janusz Korczak, who described the immense thirst and despair experienced by Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland.
“While we are here, the souls of dozens of Jews still thirst for water and freedom,” Herzog said.
“Returning the hostages is something all humanity must do, I call the International Community to join together and end this ongoing crime.”
“Once you walk into Auschwitz, you walk out of it a different person,” Israel's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said.
"Since I believe in personal relations, I was able to bring today a delegation of 40 diplomats from various countries, among them Ethiopia, Niger, and Côte d'Ivoire. Sadly, it is harder to bring Western European diplomats to see Auschwitz," Danon told The Jerusalem Post.
“It is very important for me that the entire world understands what happened on October 7,” he concluded.
Eli Sharabi, who survived Hamas captivity, stood near a crematorium wrapped with the Israeli flag and said that, while the Holocaust can not be compared to anything else in history, “we, who were kidnapped, are a proof to the triumph of the Jewish spirit.”
Sharabi told the gathered audience that “the Jewish people hold life as scared, not death.”
“We have a country, and it is a strong one. We call on all world leaders to return all the hostages home, and those who are no longer living to be buried in Israel.”
Shelli Shemtov, the mother of Omer Shemtov was was released from Hamas captivity, said that upon seeing the pile of glasses on display at the Auschwitz museum she thought about “those who dropped their glasses when they were kidnapped and could not see, the children who hid in the closet and heard how their parents are murdered.”
“My son returned, but there are still people who are trapped in the pit and are crying out to be saved. We have a home now, we must bring them back.”
Participants marched to Birkenau, many wrapped in the Israeli flag, some carrying Torah scrolls.
“This Torah is always in an airplane used by Hilotz vehatzala,” captain Eli Rowe told the Post.“Anywhere in the world where a Jew needs help, we fly there,” he said.
The ceremony was held in the pouring rain with guests holding up umbrellas and covering up with blue March of the Living rain coats.
A warm round of applause was offered to Holocaust survivor Sarah Weinstein who sang the Yiddish song Oyfn Pripetshok (On the Hearth) with IDF Chief Cantor Shai Abramson.
Written by Mark Warshawsky, the song is a warm childhood memory of a traditional Jewish teacher, a heder melamed, teaching very young children Hebrew letters.
“As you get older, children, you will learn how many tears are in these letters,” the song teaches.
Cut short due to the outpour, the crowd ended with singing Am Yisrael Hai before the ceremony concluded. Held under the slogan ‘Never Again is Now’, the memory of Holocaust survivor and Kibbutz Nir Oz educator Alex Danzig also bridged past and present.
“He was my mentor when I became involved in the ‘Witnesses in Uniforms’ program,” guide Zohar Malovski told the gathered reporters.
“I have several academic degrees, but the time I spent under Alex was the most meaningful.”
Danzig, who kept up the spirits of fellow hostages kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on October 7 in the Gaza tunnels by holding informal classes on Jewish history and civilization, was murdered.
Today, his legacy will continue digitally through an application that will spread his scholarship to those who visit the Auschwitz museum and his kibbutz.
“Alex was a walking encyclopedia on what it meant to be a Polish Jew, both before and after the war,” Malovski shared.
“His son, Yuval, is working to build a dialogue center where an ongoing dialogue between Poles and Jews, especially among members of the younger generations, will thrive.”
Commemorating the fallen
Among the 12,000 visitors was Jewish Teenager Veronica Uri from Budapest, who wore a shirt with a design by American pop artist Keith Haring. Having come out as a gay man and discussed being infected with HIV in the media during the 1980s, his vivid and easily communicative works endure to this day.
Roughly 15,000 gay men died in the Nazi-built camps. Those marked with the pink triangle (Rose Winkeln) "never lived long," wrote Polish member of the EU parliament, Robert Biedroń, in reference to Dachau.
Viktor, a young man in the uniform of the Tuchola forestry school, came to honor Polish forester Adam Loret. The school was named after Loret, a pioneer of understanding and cultivating the forestry resources of Poland.
He was murdered by the USSR while attempting to rescue the Polish state forestry records.
All Polish security service members present wore red triangles on their lapels, honoring the Poles who perished during the occupation of Poland.
Bridging the gap between the Jewish past and our digital age, a TikTok delegation of content creators participated in this year’s March of the Living.
Guided by Suzana Nahum Zilberberg, Batel Sananes Mekaitten learned about how Jewish children attempted to survive the Nazi occupation in the sewer tunnels of the Polish capital.
“I was here as a high-school student, but coming here as a mother of two sons is an entirely different story,” she shared with her 300,000 followers.