The March of the Living
The March of the Living is an annual educational program, which brings students from all over the world to Poland, in order to study the history of the Holocaust and to examine the roots of prejudice, intolerance and hate.
The March of the Living itself, a 3-kilometre walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau, is a silent tribute to all victims of the Holocaust.
The March is designed to contrast with the death marches, which began towards the end of World War II, and continued virtually up until the Third Reich’s last days. The Nazis forced approximately 750,000 prisoners, almost half of whom were Jewish, on to the death marches. The March of the Living serves as a hopeful counterpoint to the experience of hundreds of thousands of Jews and others forced by the Nazis to cross vast expanses of European terrain under the harshest of conditions where many of them perished.
The March of the Living is joined each year by thousands of Jewish teens, adults and survivors from around the world along with many other people from diverse faiths and background, including the Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish traditions. Students whose communities have experienced historic persecutions also participate, such as survivors of the Rwandan genocide, First Nation students and African Americans.
After spending a week in Poland visiting other sites of Nazi Germany’s persecution and former sites of Jewish life and culture, many participants also travel to Israel the following week to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day.
Since the first March of the Living was held in 1988, over 200,000 youth from around the world have marched down the same path leading from Auschwitz to Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The March of the Living itself, a 3-kilometre walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau, is a silent tribute to all victims of the Holocaust.
The March is designed to contrast with the death marches, which began towards the end of World War II, and continued virtually up until the Third Reich’s last days. The Nazis forced approximately 750,000 prisoners, almost half of whom were Jewish, on to the death marches. The March of the Living serves as a hopeful counterpoint to the experience of hundreds of thousands of Jews and others forced by the Nazis to cross vast expanses of European terrain under the harshest of conditions where many of them perished.
The March of the Living is joined each year by thousands of Jewish teens, adults and survivors from around the world along with many other people from diverse faiths and background, including the Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish traditions. Students whose communities have experienced historic persecutions also participate, such as survivors of the Rwandan genocide, First Nation students and African Americans.
After spending a week in Poland visiting other sites of Nazi Germany’s persecution and former sites of Jewish life and culture, many participants also travel to Israel the following week to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day.
Since the first March of the Living was held in 1988, over 200,000 youth from around the world have marched down the same path leading from Auschwitz to Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day.