A record 15,000 people took part in the 30th annual March of the Living at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on Thursday. Jews and non-Jews from around the world participated in the 3-kilometer (2-mile) walk from the infamous "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free") gate over Auschwitz to the site of the gas chambers in Birkenau.
The march was led by President Reuven Rivlin, Polish President Andrzej Duda, Israel's former Chief Rabbi Meir Lau, March of the Living chairman Dr. Shmuel Rosenman and a special delegation of senior Israel Police and IDF officials, including Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh, Mossad Director Yossi Cohen and Shin Bet Security Director Nadav Argaman.
In a speech at the main ceremony at the event, Rosenman said, "The ongoing war in Syria and its terrible outcome, which has taken around half a million lives up until now, prove the struggle against evil, racism and discrimination have not come to an end. We must actively work against evil in all its forms, against racism and hatred. We must sow the seeds for a better future for all of humanity."
Rosenman called on the young people in attendance to "help create a better world so that no country and no person will experience other Auschwitzes, Majdaneks or Treblinkas again."
In his address to participants, Rivlin said, "We are standing here and know, we cannot expect justice from this place. In this place, saturated with the ashes of our brothers and sisters, there will no longer be justice. We do not expect justice in a Europe that tries too quickly to forget, to make others forget, to deny, to destroy evidence. Our memory is patient. Those who aided Amalek [the biblical enemy of Israel] are etched in our minds. Those who stood aside, those who saw the smoking chimneys, those who heard the cries and did not lift a finger.
"Our people were betrayed by the people they lived among, in France, in Holland, in Belgium. They were murdered by the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians, and yes, also by the Poles. Too many citizens of Eastern and Western Europe stole Jewish property, took over Jewish homes, handed over Jewish neighbors, killed them and turned their backs on those who were a part of them up until a moment ago. And when the Holocaust survivors came back after the war, they were often met with hostility, violence, pogroms and murder. … No nation can legislate [a law to forget] because no law could cover the blood," he said.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Duda ahead of the march in Krakow, Rivlin said Israel respected what he called Poland's soul-searching efforts.
"But we also disagree. We demand that Poland be responsible for the completeness of research into the Holocaust," he said.
Relations between Warsaw and Jerusalem have been tense of late as a result of a recently passed law Poland's ruling Law and Justice party says is needed to defend Polish honor. Israel has expressed concern the legislation could criminalize research into the role some Poles played in war crimes.
Duda said Poland's intention was not to restrict Holocaust remembrance.
"On the contrary, we want to defend historical truth ... including those elements that are difficult for the Poles," he said. "But there was never a systemic enmity towards the Jews."
More than 3 million of Poland's 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, accounting for about half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust. Jews from across Europe were sent to be killed at death camps built and operated by the Germans on Polish soil, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor.
According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Nazis also killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians.
Thousands of Poles risked their lives to protect their Jewish neighbors; Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum recognizes 6,706 Poles as "righteous among the nations" for bravery in resisting the Holocaust, more than any other nationality.
But in recent years, research showed thousands of Poles participated in the Nazi atrocities, a challenge to the national narrative that the country was solely a victim.
Government critics accuse the Law and Justice Party of politicizing World War II to build a nationalist sense of grievance among Poles.
