Posted on 04/19/2004 3:42:11 PM PDT by yonif
Young Jews from around the world joined Holocaust survivors on Monday in a march at the former death camp of Auschwitz to mourn millions of Jews
killed during World War II by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.
Some 7,000 people from Israel and more than 20 other countries marched some three kilometres (two miles) from Auschwitz to the remains of crematoria at the nearby Birkenau camp on Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Day.
The route is followed every year in the March of the Living by young Jews, Poles and elderly survivors to remember the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, including 1.5 million murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau's gas chambers.
"I'm shaking, I'm really just shaking... I'm still afraid to go up and touch the barbed wire," said Eva Slonim, a survivor of notorious medical experiments at Auschwitz, who had travelled from Melbourne, Australia.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, in southern Poland, was the biggest death camp set up by Nazi German invaders during World War II on Hitler's order to exterminate Europe's Jewry.
"We hope and pray that our children can perpetuate the lesson of the Holocaust, the message of understanding and tolerance," said Slonim as the marchers gathered at the Auschwitz camp gate, bearing the infamous German inscription "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes you free).
Organizers of the march increased security due to violence in the Middle East and a recent scare in Hungary over a plot to blow up a Jewish museum.
Young Jews, many wrapped in Israeli flags, were visibly shaken by the sight of Auschwitz's gallows and spartan wooden camp buildings surrounded by barbed wire.
"It is a very strong experience but a necessary one. I came because this is something you really have to see," said Johana Guiloff, 16, a high school student from Santiago, Chile.
About 500 Poles joined the march in a sign of growing reconciliation between Poland and the Jewish community. Polish-Jewish relations have long been strained, mainly due to post-war pogroms carried out by Polish extremists.
Poland's pre-1939 Jewish community of 3.5 million had been reduced to a mere 300,000 by 1945 when the war ended. Since then many have migrated to the United States and Israel. Poland's Jewish community currently has some 5,000-6,000 active members.
Millions stand in silence to mark day of remembrance
Millions stood to attention in silence Monday morning to the wail of sirens as Israel marked Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Day.
Highway traffic came to a standstill as drivers stood by their cars in the annual observance in the nation with the largest community of Holocaust survivors.
The names of Jews who died in the Holocaust were read out at the Yad Vashem national Holocaust memorial and at the Knesset plenum in Jerusalem.
The day's central ceremony began at 1 P.M. on Monday at Yad Vashem and smaller ceremonies were held around the country.
The day's events will be officially closed at a ceremony to take place at Ghetto Fighters House at Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot near Nahariya.
Monday evening's ceremony will center around the children and grandchildren of survivors, with the theme "The second and third generation speak."
Opening the remembrance day in a solemn ceremony Sunday evening, President Moshe Katsav warned of rising anti-Semitism in Europe.
The ceremony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem was attended by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel's Sephardi and Ashkenazi chief rabbis and other dignitaries.
Sharon, speaking at the ceremony, said that the State of Israel does not forget the acts of those who in the past have hated the people of Israel.
That was the reason, the prime minister continued, that "we won't let the murderers of today and those of tomorrow hurt our people. Those who dare do so, will be harmed. Our face is toward peace, but the defending sword will not be returned to its sheath."
"Israel calls on the free world to join it facing the danger in the struggle for maintaining light and freedom. It calls on every free individual to remember and to never forget," Sharon added.
Katsav said "the world knew, the world saw and continued to ignore the genocide of Europe's Jews. The shame should accompany humanity for eternity."
"The State of Israel and the Yad Vashem institution have a historical obligation to remember the names and life stories of all of the victims," he added.
Katsav warned that recent anti-Semitic incidents in Europe could lead to a weakening of democracy. " Just 60 years after the terrible Holocaust, we stand before an awakening of anti-Semitism in Europe. After the war we believed that humanity would not let anti-Semitism rear it head, and that there would no longer be a need to fight anti-Semitism. We were let down."
"In a country where synagogues are being set on fire, the day is not far off when stones are hurled at the parliament, threatening democracy," Katsav said.
During the ceremony, torches were being lit by six Holocaust survivors.
The theme of this year's commemoration is "Until the last Jew, until the last name." Yad Vashem officials explained that the theme seeks to highlight the fact that just as Nazi ideology sought to destroy the last Jew, the effort must continue to document the names of those who were killed.
In the coming year, Yad Vashem's registry of Holocaust victims, containing some 3 million names, will be posted on its Internet site.
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