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Two presidents honor victims at Auschwitz (May 3) - President Ezer Weizman and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski led some 6,000 Jewish youth, elderly Holocaust survivors, and Poles along the three kilometer path from Auschwitz to Birkenau yesterday in the annual March of the Living. The march started with a mournful shofar blast at the main Auschwitz gate, notorious for its inscription "Arbeit macht frei" - work will set you free - and ended at the monument to the camps' victims near the gas chambers at Birkenau. There, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a Holocaust survivor, said Kaddish and both presidents and Education Minister Yossi Sarid spoke. In a reference to British historian David Irving and other Holocaust deniers, Weizman said "The story of the torture of the Jews of Europe will never let go of the conscience of civilized people around the world," despite the "tireless energy of the Holocaust deniers." Weizman criticized the Poles who collaborated with the Nazis or ignored the Holocaust and praised those who risked their lives on behalf of Jews. "The Holocaust was possible because of the indifference of those who stood idly watching. We shall not forget those who took pleasure in the suffering of others, the collaborators and informers," Weizman said. "I again want to honor those courageous sons of the Polish nation... who felt the pain of the persecuted, who risked their lives and the lives of their loved ones to come forward with a glass of water and a slice of bread." Before the war, some 3.5 million Jews constituted 10 percent of Poland's population. Only a few hundred thousand survived and only about 20,000 live in the country today. "I share your pain and reflection," Kwasniewski told the marchers. "We here to make sure that nobody, neither people nor nations, are ever threatened with annihilation." He also called on young Jews to put aside historical prejudice and "see Poles as friends." The march, first organized by the Education Ministry in 1988, is held annually on Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day. Sarid gave an emotional and personal speech in which he expressed his feelings walking in the camps more than 50 years after his father changed his name from Schneider to Sarid upon discovering that his family had been wiped out. "I walk in Auschwitz, in the tracks of the abandoned shoes, of the extracted teeth, of the cut-off hair, of the misplaced baggage in order to find the last moments of my family - the Schneider family - of which only a Sarid - survivor - was left," Sarid said. "From within this great wail that we hear today, I am attempting to sort through the cries and hear the screams of uncles and aunts, of my cousins, little boys and girls, my grandmother and grandfather. They call out my name, and I hear them now. Here they are, right before me, their eyes are darting back and forth, they stare at us now. This is our family, the family was devoured and this is the robe of Yosef - my Uncle Joseph. "The Holocaust deniers say that there was and will not be any robe, and that Joseph was never here and that he was never murdered," Sarid said. "From this place we will voice our contempt for Holocaust deniers, and those who have forgotten it. And our contempt will be echoed from one end of the world to the other. The robe in our hands is one we have identified, this is the robe of our father, this is the robe of our sons, this is the robe of Joseph - who was murdered." Many of the marchers, some dressed in blue and white and holding Israeli flags, placed wooden tablets with names of relatives who died at Auschwitz around the Birkenau railway tracks. Previous Next Holocaust
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