Former hostages, survivors and the bereaved walk together in March of the Living
Channeling horrors of the Holocaust on the march through Auschwitz, President Herzog says the ‘return of the hostages is a universal human imperative’
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
AUSCHWITZ, Poland — Some 12,000 people led by Holocaust survivors and an Israeli delegation of released hostages, hostages’ family members, and bereaved families marched Thursday from Auschwitz to the Birkenau camp for the 2025 March of the Living, with the horrors of the murder of six million Jews mingling with the plight of the captives in Gaza.
President Isaac Herzog and Polish President Andrzej Duda opened the march, greeting the participating Holocaust survivors and released hostage Eli Sharabi, who was representing the October 7 delegation.
“We call it the Holocaust but it was nothing less than a wild wish of destruction of murder, of trying to erase a nation,” Duda said in a statement ahead of the march marking 80 years since the liberation of the Nazi camps. “It failed, thanks to the strength of life, to the will to survive, to heroism by many members of Jewish nation, those who wouldn’t give up till the very end to defeat the Nazis.”
Speaking in Hebrew after Duda, Herzog noted that half of the Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Polish.
“In just six years, on the soil of occupied Poland, one of the most magnificent Jewish communities in history — Polish Jewry — was almost entirely destroyed by the Nazis, their helpers and collaborators,” said Herzog, adding that both he and his wife are descendants of that community.
The topic of Polish collaboration during the Holocaust is the main source of strain in Israel-Poland ties.
Herzog said that while the world vowed “Never again” after the Holocaust, “dozens of Jews again yearn within a cage, thirsting for water and for freedom as 59 of our brothers and sisters are held by terrorist murderers in Gaza, in a horrific crime against humanity.”
“The return of the hostages is a universal human imperative,” Herzog said, “and I call from here upon the entire international community to mobilize and put an end to this crime against humanity.”
Herzog noted that after the Hamas terror attack of October 7, 2023, when more Jews were killed than on any other day since the Holocaust, Poland stood by Israel and its right to defend itself. He referred to the allies who stood together against the forces of evil during Word War II and said the same need exists today as Israel faces attacks on multiple fronts, led by the Iranian “octopus of terror.”
“Iran threatens global stability and the nations of the world must stand together to stop it,” he declared.
Sharabi, whose gaunt, emaciated appearance upon his release from Hamas captivity earlier this year drew instant comparisons to concentration camp survivors, said the message of the Holocaust was to choose life, and called upon the Israeli government to make that choice and secure the release of the remaining captives.
“The Holocaust was unlike anything else. We will not forget and we will not forgive,” said Sharabi. “The fact that we are here is a victory of the Jewish spirit. The Jewish people will exist forever and ever.
“The Jewish people sanctify life, not death. The unwritten agreement between the state and its citizens must not be violated — and all the hostages must be returned home.
“I lost my wife and daughters on October 7. I went through horrors in enemy captivity, but I chose life, and that gives me a lot of hope to continue every morning anew and start rebuilding my life anew,” he said.
Marching for life
Released hostages and hostages’ family members joined different delegations making the 3.5-kilometer (2.17-mile) march through local streets and roads from Auschwitz to the nearby Birkenau concentration camp.
Local residents and business owners turned out to watch the march, along with a handful of protesters holding Palestinian flags and a sign that read “Never again means never again for anyone,” who were guarded by Polish police officers.
The march was led by Holocaust survivors, most of them in golf carts, along with an Israeli delegation, many wearing Israeli flags tied around their shoulders. It is the second year in which hostages and relatives of abductees have come to Auschwitz for the March of the Living.
From there, the march began quietly, with the faint sound of “Bring them home now!” in Hebrew, as the participants formed a long line between the two Auschwitz crematoriums where victims were reduced to ashes.
They walked, a sea of royal blue rain jackets and umbrellas, all emblazoned with the March of the Living logo, making their way from one concentration camp to the other.
They were backed by dozens of other delegations from 40 countries worldwide. Some participants sang while others called the familiar cry to bring the hostages home during their walk between the two concentration camps.
At one point, released hostages Gadi Mozes and Agam Berger, and Mozes’s daughter Moran Mozes Ben Yishay, joined the Israeli high-tech delegation as they called out the names of each of the remaining 59 hostages held in Gaza.
As the participants reached Birkenau, a walk that took over an hour, they placed wooden paddles between the rails of the train tracks that led to this place of extermination. Some paddles were decorated with photos of family members murdered in the Holocaust, others scrawled with messages of unity and love.
Police Chief Michael Bentolila from Aventura, Florida, placed a paddle that read, “Am Yisrael Chai, with love from the Bentolila family 2025.”
“This march has always been on my bucket list,” said Bentolila, who is Jewish. “I never expected I would do it like this, with this group,” pointing to the largest police officer contingent ever gathered at the March, which this year included police chiefs, rangers and sheriffs from the US and Europe.
Just ahead of the police contingent were Mozes and his daughter who said it helped them to be at the March, but that there could be no comparison made between the Holocaust and the October 7 Hamas attack.
“The Holocaust was a holocaust, and October 7 was a disaster,” said Mozes, 81, who was held completely alone in Gaza for over a year. “We were hit hard, as a family, as a society, as a place, physically and emotionally.”
Mozes Ben Yishay added that there will be no recovery for their community or Israeli society as a whole until all 59 hostages are brought home. Fourteen of them are from their community, Kibbutz Nir Oz, which was one of the hardest hit in the massive terror attack.
They joined the other marchers, following the rail entrance into Birkenau, known as the Birkenau Death Gate.
Released hostage Keith Seigel stood on a grassy rise near the train tracks, an Israeli flag tied around his shoulders.
Behind him were other released hostages and hostages’ family members, including Hagar Brodutch, Chen Goldstein-Almog, Almog Meir Jan and the parents of Hanan Yablonka, who was killed on October 7 and whose body was taken hostage before it was retrieved by IDF troops in May 2024.
Siegel — who was held at one point during his months of captivity with Omri Miran, the Nir Yitzhak hostage who appeared in a Hamas propaganda video on Wednesday — said that as a dual citizen, born and raised in the US and as an Israeli, he is in a unique position to fight for the hostages and will keep on doing so until they are all home.
“I need to do anything I can to bring them home, to participate in the effort to bring the hostages home, to bring about the agreement, the deal that brought me home, me and 33 hostages, released in the last deal,” he said.
Clouds began gathering in the previously sunny sky and the expected rain began falling heavily just as the ceremony began, but not before released hostage Agam Berger played the haunting theme of “Schindler’s List” on a 150-year-old violin saved during the Holocaust, and performed a duet with Kibbutz Be’eri survivor and mourner Daniel Weiss on guitar.
Under the unrelenting rain, IDF Cantor Shai Abramson and survivor Sarah Weinstein sang the Yiddish song “Oyfn Pripetshik,” about the Hebrew alphabet and the pains of learning — considered to be a musical memory of pre-Holocaust Europe.
When, children, you will grow older
You will understand,
How many tears lie in these letters
And how much crying
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.