The March of the Living took place in Poland, where participants gathered at the Auschwitz death camp. Israelis marked the day with silence and warnings about rising anti-Semitism.
Advertisement
Thousands of young Jews from around the world gathered in Oswiecim, Poland, on Thursday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. They marched alongside Holocaust survivors and international politicians at the site of the former Auschwitz death camp run by Nazi Germany.
Some 10,000 marchers, who walked along a 3-kilometer (1.8-mile) route between two sites at Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, waved Israeli flags and banners highlighting the issue of rising anti-Semitism.
The March of the Living has been held annually since 1988, when it began as part of an education program for young Jews.
It is estimated that 1.1 million of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II died at Auschwitz.
Sirens then silence in Israel
In Israel, the day was commemorated with the wail of sirens and sudden silence as millions of residents stopped what they were doing for two minutes — drivers stopped their cars and pedestrians stood in the streets with their heads bowed as a gesture of respect.
The day was also marked with a ceremony at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin both spoke at the ceremony.
Netanyahu said the hatred of Jews unified the radical right and left as well as radical Islamists. Rivlin warned against forging alliances with those who espouse anti-Semitism.
Netanyahu has drawn criticism for allying with far-right groups in Israel as well as populist leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been accused of fostering and profiting from anti-Semitic sentiment to advance his political agenda. Israel's treatment of Palestinians has also drawn broad international condemnation.
'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27. Numerous memorials across Germany ensure the millions of victims are not forgotten.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
Image: picture alliance/Markus C. Hurek
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
Image: picture-alliance/Daniel Karmann
German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
Image: picture alliance/Klaus Nowottnick
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Sven Hoppe
11 images1 | 11
Emboldened anti-Semites
With anti-Semitic violence in the US and across Europe on the rise, right-wing activists in Germany caused outrage Wednesday when they marched in formation to the beat of drums, carrying torches through the streets of Plauen in the eastern state of Saxony.
Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, voiced harsh criticism of the march, which he called "shocking" and "disturbing." He said it conjured "memories of the darkest chapter in German history."
Schuster called for state politicians to investigate just who had allowed the march to go ahead.
His sentiments were echoed by Green Party state parliamentarian Valentin Lippmann: "The sight of right-wing extremists marching with drums, torches, flags, and matching clothing invokes the Storm Trooper marches of the Nazi era."
The march took place on the same day that Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, released a report documenting a 13% rise in "severe and violent" anti-Semitic crimes. Kantor said: "In 2018, we witnessed the largest number of Jews murdered in a single year for decades."