Around 12,000 people led by Holocaust survivors and an Israeli delegation of released hostages, hostages’ family members, and bereaved families marched last Thursday from Auschwitz to the Birkenau camp.
By Rachel Avraham
Around 12,000 people led by Holocaust survivors and an Israeli delegation of released hostages, hostages’ family members, and bereaved families marched last Thursday from Auschwitz to the Birkenau camp for the 2025 March of the Living in order to remember the six million Jews who were massacred in the Holocaust, the worst genocide in human history, the Times of Israel reported.
According to the report, in honor of the March of the Living this year, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog stated: “In just six years, on the soil of occupied Poland, one of the most magnificent Jewish communities in history — Polish Jewry — was almost entirely destroyed by the Nazis, their helpers and collaborators.” Herzog said that while the world vowed “Never again” after the Holocaust, “dozens of Jews again yearn within a cage, thirsting for water and for freedom as 59 of our brothers and sisters are held by terrorist murderers in Gaza, in a horrific crime against humanity.”
“The return of the hostages is a universal human imperative,” Herzog said, “and I call from here upon the entire international community to mobilize and put an end to this crime against humanity.”
“We will never forget or forgive the horrors of the Holocaust,” freed hostage Eli Sharabi said, I24 News reported. “However, all the delegates who arrived here from the October 7 delegation are the victory of the Jewish people’s light and a reminder that it will continue to exist forever and ever. The Jewish people sanctify life, not death, in hope that the contract between the state and its citizens will ensure that all those who are kidnapped will return, both the living to their homes, and the bodies for burial.”
“I lost my wife and daughters on October 7. I went through horrors in enemy captivity, but I chose life, and that gives me a lot of hope to continue every morning anew and start rebuilding my life anew,” he said, the Times of Israel reported.
According to I24 News, his brother, Sharon Sharabi, who fought for his return from captivity and continues to fight for the return of all the abductees, added: “This human wall is much stronger than any wall that existed in the ghetto. This wall is not just made of body, it contains all the necessary resources – the Jewish spirit. This wall cannot be toppled. As a whole nation, we will reckon for the blood shed on October 7. Here in the harsh Holocaust our grandparents underwent, we will not give up, we will not raise our hands, we stand as one people.”
According to the Times of Israel, released hostage Gadi Mozes also attended the March of the Living and stressed that there can be no comparison between the Holocaust and the October 7 massacre. “The Holocaust was a holocaust, and October 7 was a disaster,” said Mozes, 81, who was held completely alone in Gaza for over a year. “We were hit hard, as a family, as a society, as a place, physically and emotionally.”
Nevertheless, despite the differences between the October 7 massacre and the Holocaust, this is the second year in a row that Holocaust survivors have marched beside October 7 survivors in the March of the Living, the Times of Israel reported. During the March of the Living, released hostage Agam Berger played the haunting theme of “Schindler’s List” on a 150-year-old violin saved during the Holocaust, and performed a duet with Kibbutz Be’eri survivor and mourner Daniel Weiss on guitar, the Times of Israel noted. In the march itself, some participants chanted “bring them home now,” in reference to the 59 Israelis still being held hostage in Gaza.
At one point, released hostages Gadi Mozes and Agam Berger, and Mozes’s daughter Moran Mozes Ben Yishay, joined the Israeli high-tech delegation as they called out the names of each of the remaining 59 hostages held in Gaza, the Times of Israel reported. Local residents came to watch the march and were accompanied by anti-Israel protesters, waving Palestinian flags. However, the Polish Police kept the anti-Israel protesters in check.
Photo from International March of the Living: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc-HhprIllY
