KRAKOW – The March of the Living Tuesday closing ceremony brought together Holocaust survivors, Jewish youth, and thousands of participants from all over the world.
Survivor of the Hamas October 7 terror attack Agam Berger played a violin donated to Yad Vashem by Israeli relatives of a Holocaust survivor, marking how the horror of being kept captive by Gaza radicals rhymes, in Jewish ears, with past brutalities of Jews being kidnapped, raped, and slain by organized hate aimed at them.
“I choose a path of faith,” Berger told the audience after her performance.
“The everlasting God of Israel will not be false, Am Yisrael Hai!”
Education Minister Yoav Kisch was careful to distance the Holocaust from the October 7 attack, yet made the point that, for most Israelis, the shock of seeing such brutality “happening in front of us” was terrifying.
“The sense of danger we experience as Jews did not vanish even when we attained our state,” he told reporters.
Wearing a white shemagh to cover his head, Abu Dhabi Abraham Accords activist Loay Alshareef said that "it's important to bring more Muslim leaders and Arab world social media influencers here."
Standing at the gates of Auschwitz, near the famous iron words Arbeit macht frei, Alshareef said that "in Gaza, it is important to remove the hate against Jews" starting from textbooks used in schools and ending with teaching about the Holocaust.
Two young Chabad emissaries, Yona and Meir, stood under the watchful eye of Polish security forces ensuring the safety of the event and offered delegation members to connect to their Jewish faith before entering the former death camp.
“We are here to bring back the things Jews did here 70 years ago,” Meir told The Jerusalem Post.
“Putting on tefilin, reciting the Shema, reminding the world what we were murdered for and what is the thing for which we march today,” he said.
Special delegation composed of security officers
This year, a special delegation composed of security officers from various branches around the world marched in Auschwitz. Among them was Gabriel Mullinax, who wore the pin of the Rainbow Brigade on his chest.
This was the 42nd Infantry Division of the US army that liberated Dachau. His grandfather, Earl Lawless, served in it.
“He raised me,” Mullinax told the Post as a visitor from Maryland came by to shake his hand and thank him.
“The people of Israel Live!” 88-year-old Holocaust survivor Irene Shashar cheerfully exclaimed as she wove an Israeli flag and led the march forward.
Born in the Warsaw’s Wspólna street under the name Ruth Lewkowicz, she survived the war as a child after her father was killed by the Germans thanks to the courage of her mother.
She crawled with infant Irene through the sewers of the Polish capital to the so-called Aryan side, outside the walls built by the Nazi occupation, she spent the war years as a hidden child.
“I tell the world; I am here because Hitler did not win!” She told the Post.
“Israel is our home,” the Modi'in resident added, “all we want is peace.”
On stage, Holocaust survivor Hannah Yakin wept and hugged Wilhelm Bernard Hazan. Born to Jewish parents in hiding, Hazan was a week-old baby born in the Netherlands under Nazi occupation. He was given to Yakin's father, Johan van Hulst.
One of the handful of people who risked their necks to save others, van Hulst forged documents to save Jewish lives, at times asking Hannah, to help draw a very fine line in these papers.
He arranged for the baby to be looked after by a Dutch couple that had no children of their own - saving his life.
Yakin lit a torch for hope, sharing with those gathered that her father made a point of how his bravery and decency ought to be normative human behavior – not an exception.
Yakin, who is a painter based in Israel, lit the torch of hope.