OSWIECIM, Poland (Reuters) – Thousands of people marched through the former Auschwitz Nazi German death camp in Poland on Thursday in an annual ceremony organisers said would be joined by 80 Holocaust survivors to mark the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.
The March of the Living follows a three-kilometre (1.86 mile) route to the crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau as participants pay tribute to the millions of Jews who died and call for an end to antisemitism and intolerance.
“In days when antisemitism is raising its ugly head, when there is hatred towards Israel and when cries rise for the destruction of Israel, we must stand strong and remind and promise the world: never again,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told a news conference before the march.
The participants, many draped in Israeli flags, passed through the notorious “Arbeit macht frei” (work sets you free) gate at the entrance to the camp as the march began.
Antisemitic incidents have increased along with protests against Israel in parts of Europe, North America and Australia since Israel launched its war on the Palestinian enclave of Gaza after Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
“We both expressed our hope that the war taking place in the Gaza Strip, which was started by Hamas’ attack on Israel, will be able to end, that the hostages who are still in Hamas hands will be able to return home,” Polish President Andrzej Duda, standing alongside Herzog, told the news conference.
More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease at Auschwitz, which Nazi Germany set up in occupied Poland during World War Two.
More than three million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, accounting for about half of the Jews in Europe killed during the Holocaust.
Between 1941 and 1945 Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically killed six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, along with gypsies, sexual minorities, disabled people and others singled out by Nazi genocidal ideology.
(Reporting by Kuba Stezycki; writing by Alan Charlish; editying by Mark Heinrich)
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