March of the Living honors virus fighters
Israelis pause to reflect on toll of Holocaust
JERUSALEM — Like so many mothers, Raul Artal’s insisted that her son was going to be a doctor.
But there was a history — and heroism — behind her ambitions for him. A determined Jewish doctor in a concentration camp in 1943 delivered Artal in a barn, despite his feet-first position — and saved the lives of both mother and son.
His mother was right: Now, Artal, 78, is a retired obstetrician himself.
“I’ve heard that story so many times, I could become nothing else” but a doctor, he chuckled during a recent interview from his Los Angeles-area home.
By birth and by choice, he personifies the theme of this year’s International March of the Living — an educational program that coincides with Israel’s annual Holocaust memorial day.
Thousands of people usually take part in the march on the grounds of the former Auschwitz death camp, which had been run by Germany, in Poland. But for a second year in a row, Wednesday’s event took place virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Doctors like the one who delivered Artal in the most harrowing circumstances “served as rays of light during the Holocaust,” the event’s organizers said. In 2021, “we salute the relentless commitment of the selfless professionals facing today’s world health crisis.”
Israel began marking the 24-hour period at sundown Wednesday with a ceremony at Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust memorial. Six survivors shared emotional first-person accounts before lighting honorary torches.
In an annual custom, Israeli television and radio shifted over to Holocaust remembrance programs, and restaurants and other entertainment shut down.
On Thursday, air raid sirens wailed across Israel. Pedestrians halted on sidewalks. Drivers on the freeways parked in place and stood beside their vehicles for the two minutes of silence.
People spoke of how the isolation of the past year’s lockdowns weighed especially heavily on Holocaust survivors, fewer than 180,000 of whom remain in Israel.
Some 900 of them died from COVID-19 in 2020, roughly one in seven of the country’s overall death toll.