Thousands of young Jews from the world over and young Poles have come together at the WW2 German Nazi death camp in Auschwitz to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust in the annual March of the Living, now in its 18th year. 

Click on the audio icon to listen to a report by Elzbieta Krajewska

Organized for the first time in 1988, that first March of the Living brought together about 1500 young Jews from the world over. This year, around six thousand visitors and a thousand Poles walk under the infamous Auschwitz camp gate with its ironic motto in German “Arbeit Macht Frei” – “work liberates”, following a 3-kilometre road, known as the Road of Death, from Auschwitz to the place of extermination at Auschwitz-Birkenau. This is where the main celebrations are held.
 
The March of the Living begins to the sound of the shofar, a ram’s horn used in Jewish religious ceremonies, and culminates with the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. The young Jews who come here say that this is an occasion to demonstrate that in spite of the Holocaust their nation lives – the young Poles also add that they are here to show their respect, and just to be together in a difficult place.
 
The Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau is the only concentration camp on the UNESCO World Heritage list. It was the largest of Nazi German concentration and extermination camps in World War 2, established on the occupied territory of Poland. Operating between 1940-1945, the camp was originally built for Polish prisoners. It developed into a mass extermination site, where mostly Jews were murdered, but Poles, Romanies, Russian POWs, and others as well. About 80% of the people who arrived in Auschwitz, brought in from ghettoes and camps around Europe, never lived to be its prisoners. From the railway ramp they were moved to the gas chambers and within some 20 minutes they were dead. The final numbers of the Holocaust are uncertain but it is calculated that around a million Jews died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, around 150 thousand Poles, 23 thousand Romanies and more than 30 thousand others. 
 
The most numerous March of the Living so far was held in 2005 in Auschwitz-Birkenau, on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp. The 20 thousand participants were led by then Prime Ministers of Poland and Israel.