Israeli, Polish presidents join Holocaust remembrance march
WARSAW, Poland — The presidents of Israel and Poland joined thousands of others Thursday for a Holocaust remembrance event at the former Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, hoping to put recent tensions behind them.
Presidents Reuven Rivlin of Israel and Andrzej Duda of Poland lit candles, bowed their heads and pressed their hands on the Death Wall, a site at Auschwitz where inmates, chiefly Polish resistance fighters, were executed by German forces during World War II.
They then led thousands in the March of the Living, which takes place each year on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The solemn march began at the main gate of Auschwitz and ended 2 miles away at Birkenau, where Jews from across Europe were transported by train and murdered in gas chambers.
Duda said he and Rivlin were there to give testimony to the destruction of the Jewish people and warn about where antiSemitism, xenophobia and racism can lead.
“Our common presence here shows the world: Never again anti-Semitism, never again genocide, never again Holocaust,” Duda said.
Poland recently passed a Holocaust speech law, which criminalizes blaming Poland for crimes committed by Nazis. Israel fears the law’s intent is to repress discussion about Poles who helped the Germans kill Jews.
Nazi Germany killed some 1.1 million people in the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps. The victims were mostly Jews, but also included Poles, Roma and Soviet POWs.