“March of the Living” in Poland
Israel commemorates Holocaust victims
4/28/2022, 4:21 p.m
The whole country stood still for two minutes to commemorate the Jews murdered during National Socialism: the President of the Bundestag, Bas, and the head of the railway, Lutz, took part in the events in Israel. The victims of the Nazis are also remembered in other countries.
Israel commemorated the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The President of the Bundestag, Bärbel Bas, and Richard Lutz, Head of Railways, also attended commemorative events. Sirens wailed nationwide for two minutes in the morning. Cars stopped in the streets, people stood still and remembered the dead. Meanwhile, around 2,000 young Jews from different countries commemorated the victims of the Holocaust at a “March of the Living” in Poland.
At the Parliament in Jerusalem, Bas attended a ceremony where the names of victims of the Holocaust were read out. The SPD politician lit a candle in memory of the Jewess Irma Nathan, who was deported from her hometown of Duisburg and murdered by the Nazis in 1942. Lutz laid a wreath at the Yad Vashem memorial. Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day this year was themed “Train Journeys to Destruction: The Deportation of the Jews During the Holocaust.”
The Reichsbahn played a crucial role in the extermination of European Jews. Deutsche Bahn boss Lutz said: “Our predecessor organization was significantly involved in the murder of European Jews, Sinti and Roma through deportations. Millions of people were brought to ruin by trains.”
According to the authorities, more than 75 years after the end of the Second World War, 161,400 Holocaust survivors are still living in Israel. According to the Jewish Claims Conference, around 100 survivors have immigrated to Israel from Ukraine since the beginning of the war. During the “March of the Living” in Poland, young Jews, together with some survivors of the Shoah, walked the 3.2-kilometer route from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest of the German death camps during the Nazi era.
The memorial event took place again for the first time after a two-year break due to the corona pandemic. In a video message organized by the Claims Conference, survivors from different countries called for commemoration. At the same time, the warning, delivered in 100 words by 100 survivors in English, Hebrew, German, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian and other languages, was a warning against hatred and indifference.