March of the Living to Focus on Post-Survivor Period

JTA By Sam Sokol 2015 marks the twenty seventh March of the Living, in which students from more than forty five countries around the globe make a pilgrimage to…

Continue reading

March of the Living 2015

J-Wire 70 years after the end of the Second World War 11,000 participants, both Jews and non-Jews, joined the 27th March of the Living from Auschwitz to Birkenau. Coming from over 45 countries, they took part in the annual march from the gates of Auschwitz to a commemoration ceremony at Birkenau following a week’s preparation in Poland during which they learned the universal lessons of the Holocaust including the importance of fighting hatred, intolerance, racism and fascism. To date over 220,000 young people have taken part in the March of the Living since 1988. This year saw delegations from, among others, the United States, Canada, UK, Mexico, Panama, Greece, Australia, Morocco, France, Austria, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa with each delegation accompanied by a Holocaust survivor who tell their personal story. The March of he Living was attended this year by the Minister of Education and Women’s Affairs of Austria, Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek, and the Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations in Geneva, Ambassador Keith Harper, who lit two of the six torches at the end of the ceremony. The march was opened by the sound of the Shofar and Dr. Shmuel Rosenman, Chairman of the March of the Living, who said, “Let us march against intolerance, against hate and for a better future for all humanity.” His Holiness Pope Francis sent a special message to the March of the Living: “I ask you to convey to the organizers of the March of Living my closeness to them and their mission. All the efforts for fighting in favor of life are praiseworthy and have to be supported without any kind of discrimination. For this reason I am very close to these initiatives, that are not only against death but also against the thousands of discriminatory phobias that enslave and kill. I thank them for all their doings, and pray to the Lord a blessing for them in this struggle for life, equality and dignity. The President of the State of Israel, President Rivlin, also sent this message: “Even though 70 years have passed we did not forget and we will never forget that horrible chapter in the history of mankind. The March of the Living is proof of the everlasting connection between the past and the future. Today, as you all come together and march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, Jews and non-Jews alike you show the world what this connection really means. Young adults walking side by side with the last of the survivors who were here exactly 70 years ago. Bring life into the stories, the stories of those who were murdered for being Jewish, for being different. I turn to you young adults and urge you to cherish this moment. The survivors are now passing to you the torch of life, of belief, of standing strong. Hold this torch high to ensure that even if there are no more survivors living among us their memory will always be part of our life and will never fade away…We build our future with eyes wide open and alert to the threats. Nevertheless the horrors of the past and the threats of the present will not dictate our lives nor shape the lives of our children. We forever work for a better future.” This year, as every year, the March of the Living was led by Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv-Yafo who is himself a child survivor. Rabbi Lau spoke at the main ceremony and said, “We cannot forget and we cannot forgive. We cannot forget because there are expressions of anti-Semitism and hatred which remind us daily, there are expressions of destruction of a state. We cannot forgive because we have no authority to forgive, the victims didn’t give us that mandate. In the death camps there was no discrimination by origin, tribe or opinion when they killed us all because we were Jewish. If we could all die together we must know the secret to live together in peace, unity and brotherhood. We owe our survival to their memory.” Holocaust survivor Sigmund Rolat addressed the students saying: “We have all gathered here to remember. From all sides, we are called upon not to forget. But why should we remember at all? If I had a choice I would prefer NOT to remember. Not to remember the Czestochowa Ghetto where my family and I, then a child, were imprisoned. Not to remember the killings of my father and mother, of my brother and family members, of my Polish nanny Elka who chose to remain in the ghetto because she loved a Jewish child – me. Not to remember the daily humiliation, the routine of murder, the hunger, the cold, and the numbing knowledge that we are powerless and alone. I would prefer not to have these memories – but I do not have the choice. Why then choose memory if you are not forced to? I can think of four reasons. The first is simple solidarity. If you choose my memories, this means that we together are no longer with them alone. Each time we reach out to the legacy of horror, we make a crack in the ghetto wall, a breach in the barbed wire. Not that we can tear them down – it is 70 years too late for that. Walls built with blood and death survive their physical downfall. They need to be pulled down day by day by remembering. The second is simple decency. The Germans had managed not only to murder the six million: they murdered also the memories of them ever having existed. True, the great majority of those then killed would have passed away by now – even had there been no Shoah. But they would have lived on in the memories of their children and friends, in the record of the achievements and even failures of their lives. The Shoah eliminated all that as well. Your remembrance is their only chance. The third reason is simple fear. It is an illusion to believe that Auschwitz can be forgotten simply because the right side won the war. Auschwitz remains with us forever always waiting to be realized again. Do not believe the magic incantation of “Never again”: it HAS happened again. Think of Bosnia, Sudan, Rwanda. In different ways, to different peoples – but it has. The Shoah remains unique in the sense it was unprecedented. But all genocides are tragic in their own ways, and remembering them is the first step to preventing their recurrence. Remembering is, after all, the least we can do. And so we stand here in solidarity, mourning and fear. Our unity is rooted not only in our Jewish peoplehood which we share with those whom we remember today. Their Jewishness was not incidental to their fate: it determined it. But our unity today encompasses all, Jews and non-Jews, who remember, grieve and mourn – and participate in our solidarity. In a world in which once again there are places where it is not safe to be Jewish, today’s meeting assumes an added dimension. For Poland on whose occupied soil the Germans had placed the abomination of Auschwitz is today a place where it is safe to be a Jew. Poland now embraces its small but thriving Jewish community. Our history is cherished in the Polin Museum which has recently opened in Warsaw. And next to the Museum we shall build a monument to those Poles who – like my Elka – risked their lives to save Jews from the chimneys of Auschwitz. From the ghetto walls of Czestochowa. From the Abyss. And our gratitude towards them is the fourth reason to remember. God bless you and your memories.”  

Continue reading

Parent of MOTL Alumni Talks About Being the Mom of an IDF Soldier

(Names have been deleted at the request of the family) Following are the remarks delivered at a community rally in support of Israel. I’m the mother of a Lone Soldier. The…

Continue reading

March of the Living Budapest

March of the Living Budapest 30,000+ marching to train station where 600 participants will board train (of the…

Continue reading

March of the Living teens experience Shabbat in Poland

This past weekend has been one of the most inspirational weekends I have ever experienced. On Friday…

Continue reading

‘Train of the Living’ to Memorialize 70th Anniversary of Deportation of Hungarian Jews

The Jerusalem Post By Daniel K. Eisenbud  Hundreds of high school students to ride train from Budapest to Auschwitz to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. Hundreds of high school students from across the globe march from Auschwitz to Birkenau last year in an annual event sponsored by International March of the Living. Photo: COURTESY OF BATIA DORI To mark the 70th anniversary of the mass deportation and murder of over 585,000 Hungarian Jews during World War II, hundreds of highschool students from across the globe will travel by train from Budapest to Auschwitz, where they will join 10,000 other students to march to the Birkenau extermination camp. The four-day event, organized by International March of the Living to observe Holocaust Remembrance Day, will begin on Friday in Hungary, which is ranked among the most anti-Semitic nations in Europe. Indeed, the country’s third most popular political party is the radical-nationalist Jobbik Party, which unapologetically espouses and condones openly anti-Semitic rhetoric. In a show of unity to Jewish victims of the war, as well as present anti-Semitism afflicting his nation, Hungary’s President Janos Ader is scheduled to honor the memory of the Hungarian Jews killed in the Holocaust and proclaim his opposition to ongoing anti-Semitism. International March of the Living’s chairman Shmuel Rosenman said he was heartened by Ader’s participation in the program, adding that the president’s responsibility will be to point out the profoundly indelible damage that the deportations and subsequent slaughter inflicted. “The painful memories of such a tragic massacre should be harsh enough to have been ingrained within people worldwide that such unchecked hatred cannot go unnoticed, or be dismissed as just ‘the grumblings of a few,’” said Rosenman. In a symbolic gesture to commemorate the once thriving Hungarian Jewish community, hundreds of young Jews from Budapest and around the world will gather in the capital on Saturday evening to travel by train to Auschwitz- Birkenau, where the vast majority of the nearly 600,000 victims never returned from. President Shimon Peres has prepared a special message for the ceremony in Budapest, calling for tolerance and a global campaign against any kind of racism and neo-Nazism, Rosenman said. Yoram Dori, media adviser for the event, said the train ride from Budapest to Auschwitz will be called “The Train of the Living” and “serve as a powerful testament to the great victory of the Jewish people [over] the Nazi animal.” On Holocaust Remembrance Day, passengers of “The Train of the Living” will join survivors and thousands of other participants for the organization’s annual 3 km. march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest and most notorious of the death camps. A ceremony memorializing Hungarian Jewry and the six million Jews murdered, including 1.5 million children, will follow. Rosenman said the march will honor the memory of Jews dehumanized and killed during Nazi Germany’s infamous death marches. “This march, joined by thousands of teens, adults and survivors from around the world of diverse backgrounds, serves as a hopeful counterpoint to the experience of hundreds of thousands of Jews forced by the Nazis to cross vast expanses of European terrain under the harshest of conditions,” he said. The International March of the Living is an annual educational program which brings students from all over the world to Poland to study the history of the Holocaust and the roots of prejudice, intolerance and hate. Since its inception in 1988, the organization has sponsored over 200,000 youths from around the world who have marched down the same path leading from Auschwitz to Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day. “International March of the Living imparts the lessons of the Holocaust, celebrates the history of Jewish survival and instills a passion for social justice,” said Rosenman. “Youth from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds have participated in this life-transforming experience.” Moreover, Rosenman said the experience of personally witnessing the horrors of world Jewry slaughtered during the Holocaust serves as an incomparably powerful educational tool. “Instead of learning just from books, the literal facts on the ground become their laboratory.” Following commemorative ceremonies in Hungary and Poland, the students will fly to Israel, where they will honor Israel’s fallen soldiers during Remembrance Day and celebrate Independence Day.

Continue reading

UN Exhibit to Honor March of the Living

"When you listen to a witness, you become a witness" On Tuesday, January 28th 2014, in the Visitor Centre, Dag Hammarskjold Library Lower Level, the United Nations will begin hosting the International March of the LivingExhibit: When You Listen to a Witness, You Become a Witness. The opening event and reception will take place that evening in the Library gallery from 6PM – 8PM, with Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, The Honorable Ron Prosser, as the keynote speaker. The exhibit opening follows International Holocaust Remembrance Day, an annual day of commemoration established by the United Nations. When You Listen to a Witness, You Become a Witness will run through the end of February 2014. The exhibit is open to UN pass holders and for those who have pre-registered online for a UN Guided Tour from 10AM-5PM, Monday thru Friday. Additional private tours together with guest speakers can be arranged through the March of the Living offices. When You Listen to a Witness, You Become a Witness features powerfully moving images and reflections in verse gleaned from 25 years of March of the Living, in color and black-and-white representations, documenting the stories of aging survivors and young students as they walk hand in hand participating in a life transforming journey. The March of the Living is an annual program which brings high school students from around the world for a week of intensive education and touring in Poland and Israel, to study the history of the Holocaust and examine the roots of prejudice, intolerance and hate. Its aim is to impart the lessons of the Holocaust, celebrate the history of Jewish survival and instill a passion for social justice. The students visit once thriving sites of Jewish life and sites of mass murder and genocide in Poland. On Holocaust Remembrance Day – on April 28, 2014 – they will march from Auschwitz to Birkenau in memory of Nazi victims with survivors sharing their stories standing in the very places their tragic stories unfolded. The UN exhibit ends with a “Guest Book.” Visitors are encouraged to write their own messages of hope and tolerance. These statements will be “taken” on the 2014 March of the Living, and placed on the grounds of Aushwitz to Birkenau along with the thousands of other plaques participants place there themselves.

Continue reading

Young and Old Walk Hand in Hand: For 25 Years the March of the Living Has Striven to Bond High School Students with Holocaust Survivors

National Post  Abigale Subhan  A Holocaust survivor takes part in the March of the Living holding a photos of himself as a concentration camp prisoner. A UN-hosted exhibit marking the March of the Living’s efforts will show hundreds of poems, quotes, photos and videos from the experience of students and survivors. Photo: Y. Zeliger When Holocaust survivor Anita Ekstein first visited the death camp that held her mother, she couldn’t stop shaking. She walked into the Belzec extermination camp in Poland to visit a newly opened memorial – and found her mother’s name, Ettel, etched into the wall. It was 2005, on Mother’s Day, more than 60 years after she had last seen her mother. “It’s like my cemetery. We don’t have graves to visit, so now once a year when I go there, it’s like going to the cemetery there for me, my family,” the 79 year old says of her experience at the death camp where almost 435,000 Jews went to die. Now Mrs. Ekstein’s story will be told at a UN-hosted exhibit in New York celebrating 25 years for an organization that bridges the gap between high school students and Holocaust survivors. Since 1998, the March of the Living has organized a week long trip to Poland for a group of high schools students. The students take the trip with Holocaust survivors, learning about the genocide and examine “the roots of prejudice, intolerance and hate” They also participate in a three-kilometer march from Auschwitz to Birkenau the largest Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War. More than 200,000 students, from various backgrounds, have taken part in the program since its inception. Jerry Kozminski, right, shows his concentration camp tattoo to students visiting Auschwitz. He and his family risked their lives to rescue and hide 22 Jews from the Nazis. Photo: Igal Hecht Eli Rubenstein, National Director for the March of the Living Canada, says the event is especially poignant for survivors. “Now they are not marching towards an almost certain death, but toward freedom, with pride and dignity”, he says. This year will be Mrs. Ekstein’s fourteenth time on the trip. She has attended with most of her family, which consists of three children, eight grandchildren, and one great grandchild. When Mrs. Ekstein was seven years old, the Nazis forced her family into a ghetto and her father asked a kind Polish man to save his only daughter. The stranger took her in, gave her a new name and taught her about Christianity, until a neighbor revealed her identity. When spent seven weeks hiding in a cupboard, the same stranger rescued her again. At the end of the war, she discovered her mother and father had died. She left Poland in 1946 with her aunt – who had been rescued by Oskar Schindler – and started a new life in Canada, 2 years later. “We are four generations, just because one man had the courage to save a little girl”, she says. “I am marching for every one” Photo: Y. Zeliger The UN exhibit will celebrate hundreds of poems, quotes, photos and videos, from the experience of students, and survivors during the trip. Rose Shentow, wife of a former Auschwitz prisoner, has been on the trip four times and the March has touched her family in many ways. But as a former teacher, she says she is most interested in the impact the trip has on students. On her first trip, Ms. Shentow noticed a teenaged girl who was transfixed with one particular item at the Auschwitz museum collection. It was a pair of red-haired braids that had cut off a little girl’s head – the braids mired the same red hair of the student. “I never forgot the scene. I still get shivers up and down my spine when I think of that young lady looking at that pair of braids” she said. As for Mrs., Ekstein, she will host two pieces at the exhibit. Her final piece is a quote to her daughter and granddaughter as looks back at a sea of people marching from Auschwitz to Birkenau. “You see? Hitler did not win.”In 2012, Lauren Colt, a 19-year-old student from Toronto went on the March and kept a diary of her experience. She also had recurring nightmares of bring taken away from her family for a couple of months after the trip. “I kept putting myself in [the victims’] shoes,” she said, “It is really emotional”.    

Continue reading

The March of the Living Expands Its Message to Address a New Generation

Greater Miami Jewish Federation More than a quarter century after the founding of the March of the Living, an innovative Holocaust education program for high school students, its organizers are re-examining the iconic journey to Poland and Israel and adapting new ways to make it relevant for a new generation of young Jews. “Kids are now more savvy and connected than the teens of 15 or 20 years ago,” said Morrie Siegel, Chair of Miami’s March of the Living program. “They’ve grown up with various messages about the Holocaust, and that exposure challenges us to engage them. We are the stewards of this phenomenal community Holocaust education effort, and our job is to set the table for these kids so they can take the experiences of the March and make them their own.” Created in 1987 by educators and Holocaust survivors in Miami, the program today is known locally as the Leo Martin March of the Living (LMMOL), in memory of the Holocaust survivor and major benefactor who founded the Friends of the March of the Living. Local coordination of the March is administered by the Center for the Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE), a subsidiary of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. The educational journey begins in Miami with a series of training sessions, in which participants learn about the history of Poland and Israel, meet participating Holocaust survivors, and share their own family connections to the Holocaust. Then, the students travel to Poland, where they study the history of pre-war European Jewry and the Holocaust, and examine the roots of prejudice, intolerance and hate. The central impactful “March” of the program is a 3-kilometer walk from the site of the Nazis’ Auschwitz concentration camp to the Birkenau death camp in a silent tribute to all victims of the Holocaust. Since the first March of the Living, more than 250,000 youth from around the world have followed the same path. The Poland portion of the program reaches a crescendo at this ceremony, which demonstrates to the international community that the Jewish people are alive, strong and vibrant. “The March of the Living is about actively entering history, rather than passively studying history,” said Rabbi Arnold Samlan, Executive Director of CAJE. “By visiting the death camps of Eastern Europe, participants undertake a commemorative act, which demonstrates to the world that the deaths of six million Jews and so many others will never be forgotten.” One challenge for organizers, said Samlan, is the environment of Poland itself. Over the years, some of the historic sites have been sanitized and renovated, while others have been damaged or even destroyed.. Local residents have also become accustomed to the annual March and are less apt to be surprised by the influxof young Jews each year. Today, the March is being made more relevant to young participants by emphasizing both the universally human as well as the particularly Jewish experiences of the Holocaust. Educators emphasize the individual obligation to never again allow discrimination directed by any individual or group against another to gain strength. Participants are inspired to commit to building a world free of oppression and intolerance, a world of freedom, democracy and justice for all of people. The March is scheduled each year to coincide with Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) while participants are in Poland. The second leg of the journey takes them to Israel, where they experience the centrality and historical importance of that country to the Jewish people, as well as its role as a modern safe haven for Jews fleeing oppression. After visiting Poland, observing Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) and celebrating Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day) in Israel is dramatic and moving. LMMOL Manager Aley Sheer explained that this timing is intentional because it helps perpetuate the observance of both occasions in the minds of the March participants. “The chapters of Jewish history that are best remembered are those that have been distinguished by events in the Jewish calendar,” said Sheer. “For example, we remember the slavery in Egypt because we celebrate Passover. The March of the Living experience creates memories that will last throughout the participants’ lifetimes, and will be directly connected withYom HaShoah, Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut. These observances ensure that a new generation will remember and honor the lessons of the Holocaust and its aftermath for years to come.” For Miami participants, Yom Hazikaron has been particularly poignant in recent years because they have spent the day in Yerucham, Miami’s partner city in the Negev region. The participants share the emotional occasion with teens and families from Yerucham, gaining a greater appreciation of sacrifices made to defend the State of Israel. Since its inception, the March of the Living has been enhanced by the participation of Holocaust survivors who have accompanied participants on their journey and shared their memories of the inhumanity inflicted by the Nazis. Seven decades after the defeat of Nazi Germany and the liberation of the concentration camps, many Holocaust survivors have passed away and others are becoming too frail to make the trip. “The survivors have been an irreplaceable asset to the March and have had a profound influence on our program and participants,” said Sheer. “There will come a time when they will be gone, but their testimony and influence will be maintained.” The March of the Living program has been recording the memories and insights of Holocaust survivors to preserve their poignant participation for the future, he said. As the generation of survivors is passing, a goal for the March of the Living is to empower participants as the new advocates of the lessons of the Holocaust. The program’s organizers seek to imbue today’s teens with a sense of morality and fairness that comes from witnessing one of the bloodiest periods of oppression in human history. “We look to the young people who participate in the March to take up the message of the survivors and share that message with the world,” Sheer said. “As we get further in time from the Holocaust period, that mission becomes even more critical, and will preserve the spirit of the survivors into the future.” Morrie Siegel pointed out that the costs of operating the March of the Living have escalated dramatically over the years, presenting still another challenge. Thanks to support from the Greater Miami Jewish Federation and the Friends of the March of the Living, the program is partially underwritten and can offer scholarships to participants. The next March of the Living is scheduled to take place in April 2015 and registration is now open at http://www.caje-miami.org/mol. For more information, contact Aley Sheer of the Center for the Advancement of Jewish Education at 305-576-4030, ext. 143, or [email protected].

Continue reading

Thousands join March of the Living from Auschwitz to Birkenau

Y Net News  By Michal Margalit Annual event, now in its 27th year, includes delegations from 45 countries, each accompanied by a Holocaust survivor. Thousands of people from around the world arrived in Poland on Thursday for the annual March of the Living walk from the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz to the nearby Birkenau camp, as part of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day. March of the Living in Auschwitz (Photo: EPA) This year, people from more than 45 countries will take part in the event, with delegations from the United States, Canada, UK, Mexico, Panama, Greece, Australia, Morocco, France, Austria, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa. Each delegation was to be accompanied by a Holocaust survivor who was to tell their own personal story. Now in its 27th year, the March of the Living has been performed by more than 220,000 people. The marchers will work 3.2 km from Auschwitz to the nearby Birkenau camp. Following the two-hour march, a ceremony commemorating the victims of the Holocaust will take place. "It's hard to say how many people are here," Yoram Dori, spokesman for the March of the Living, told Ynet ahead of the march. "But there are thousands here. At the head of the march, just like every year, will be Chairman of Yad Vashem and the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, himself a Holocaust survivor. He will be joined by dignitaries from Israel and abroad." The march this year will mark 70 years to the end of World War II and the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army. An Austrian delegation will join the marchers this year, led by Austrian Education Minister Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek. Other members of the Austrian delegation will include the Second President of the Austrian National Council, Karlheinz Kopf, the head of the Greens party, Dr. Eva Glawischnig, and Susanne Brandsteidl, Executive President of the Vienna Board of Education. They will be accompanied by 300 Austrian teenagers who are not Jewish. "The Austrian delegation is here to show that the education system in the country has been teaching the lessons learned from the Holocaust and the Holocaust topic in general over the past few years," Dori said. "Yesterday, there was a ceremony in Krakow, where the Austrian education minister explained they feel an obligation to participate in the March of the Living. They introduced the topic of the Holocaust to their curriculum as part of the country's fight against anti-Semitism and racism." The US administration sent its Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council, Keith Harper, to the March of the Living. Harper is a Native American of the Cherokee Tribe and is considered close to President Barack Obama. "Jewish teenagers from all over the world are taking part in the march," Dori said. "They come to Poland for a week for a tour of the extermination camps and other Jewish sites and then return to Israel, as a symbol of the transition from the Holocaust to the liberation, and see Israel's accomplishments, participate in a memorial service for IDF soldiers and then celebrate Independence Day with a march in Jerusalem." "Those who have yet to see the joy on Independence Day of the teens who participated in the March of the Living a week before, have not seen true joy," Dori added. "You can see Jewish teenagers in the March of the Living wrapped in Israeli flags, looking inwards and sad as they're exposed for the first time to the shacks (in the camp), see the suitcases of Jews with their name tags, the Jews' shoes and other items, and you can't stay indifferent to that."

Continue reading