WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Holocaust survivors from around the world joined thousands of people on Tuesday in the March of the Living, an annual event held at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in memory of the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany during World War II.
Of the 50 survivors taking part, some had travelled from Israel, organizers said, despite logistical difficulties caused by airspace restrictions associated with the Iran war.
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Yakin Krakovsky, deputy chief executive of the International March of the Living organization, warned that anti-Semitism is alive today despite the lessons of the Holocaust.
“Since Oct. 7, anti-Semitism has surged and is spreading everywhere,” she said. “The scale and normalization of this hatred echoes the dark times we have seen before and, today of all days, we know how it ended.”
The march in Poland took place on what is Holocaust Remembrance Day in the Jewish calendar. It began at Auschwitz and ended 3 kilometers (2 miles) away at Birkenau, where Jews from across Europe were transported by train and murdered in gas chambers.
Among the guests were survivors of recent anti-Semitic attacks, including the mass shooting in December in which 15 people were killed during a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, in Australia.
Hannah Abesidon, the daughter of 78-year-old Holocaust survivor Tibor Weitzen, one of the 15 people killed in the Bondi Beach massacre, recounted her experience of the attack in which her father was killed.
“My father didn’t make it because he was a Jew,” Abesidon said. “It starts with the Jews but it doesn’t end with the Jews.”
The annual march, now in its 38th year, usually draws thousands of participants, including Holocaust survivors and Jewish students, leaders and politicians.
