Hostage families join Holocaust survivors ahead of 2nd Auschwitz march since Oct. 7
10 former captives and survivors of Oct. 7 onslaught among 8,000 participants who tour Holocaust death camp ahead of Thursday’s annual March of the Living
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
KRAKOW, Poland — A former Hamas hostage, relatives of current and former Gaza captives and survivors of the October 7 onslaught joined 80 Holocaust survivors on a Wednesday tour of the Auschwitz World War II concentration camp ahead of the March of the Living on Thursday.
They were part of the gathering of 8,000 people who will march from Birkenau to Auschwitz in the annual event.
“We have 80 survivors this year, it’s very symbolic, as it’s 80 years since World War II,” said March of the Living president Phyllis Greenberg Heideman. “It will probably be their last time in this godforsaken place, Auschwitz Birkenau.”
Survivors will include Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, who was freed from Buchenwald as a child and served as Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi.
This year’s event, marking 80 years since the end of WWII, includes 190 buses and 90 delegations from 40 countries worldwide.
Participants included released hostage Agam Berger, bereaved Kibbutz Be’eri survivor Daniel Weiss, the grandparents of hostage Bar Kuperstein, the mother and grandmother of released hostage Omer Shem Tov, the father and grandmother of released hostage Omer Wenkert along with other bereaved families.
It is the second time the march is been held since Hamas’s October 7 onslaught. While relatives of hostages participated in last year’s event, no former hostages did. Berger is one of ten former hostages taking part in this year’s march.
They will be accompanied by President Isaac Herzog who will arrive on Thursday and meet Polish President Andrzej Duda to discuss efforts to combat antisemitism.
At one point during Wednesday’s Auschwitz tour, the group of hostage families gathered inside one of the crematoriums and began praying and singing together — some wrapped in Israeli flags.
They walked through the camp under blue skies and along green lawns and purple lilac bushes to the infamous main gate that reads, “Arbeit macht frei (Work Sets You Free).”
Weiss, a musician whose father was killed protecting the kibbutz on October 7 while his mother was murdered in Hamas captivity, led the group in song under the Auschwitz gate.
Delegations of other visitors walked along the gravel paths of the concentration camp that has long been reconfigured as a museum. The brick buildings of the camp were originally the barracks of a Polish army camp before World War II.
The Holocaust survivors, many in their 80s and 90s and accompanied by children and grandchildren, toured the concentration camp in golf carts.
They entered Block 27 to see the Book of Names, an exhibit with the names, dates of birth, hometowns and known places of death – where known — of 4,800,000 Holocaust victims, with some of the survivors paging through the dense, two-meter-high pages, periodically identifying names of their loved ones.
Eighty-six-year-old Holocaust survivor Ella Katz, who was part of the delegation from Israel, wept uncontrollably when she found the name of her grandmother, who was killed in Auschwitz.
“I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember her face and now I saw her name. It’s unbelievable,” said Katz, from Kfar Saba, who was visiting Auschwitz for the second time since the war with her daughter. “I’ve come full circle.”
Katz and her father, Shlomo Peretz, originally from Belarus, ran and hid in the forest when she was two and a half years old.
Some of the survivors held a short ceremony with Merrill Eisenhower, the great-grandson of former US president Dwight D. Eisenhower, who led the Allied forces that liberated the camps, and the grandson of John Eisenhower, who was his father’s aide de camp and was told by his father to bear witness.
It was Merrill Eisenhower’s second visit to the concentration camp.
“Auschwitz is terrible and sad and devastating,” he said. “But I walked today here with a Holocaust survivor and with a 15-year-old visitor, and I had hope.”
Survivors stood and told their personal stories of survival, thanking Eisenhower for his great-grandfather’s acts.
“We’re alive because of the sacrifices made,” said Martin Stern, a survivor and doctor from England who was born in the Netherlands and hidden by other families as a child.
“We lived three blocks from where Anne Frank was hiding. Of course, we didn’t know that at the time, but I could see the same church she looked at every day,” recalled Stern.
At an evening ceremony held at the Kraków Opera House for March of the Living participants, Heideman told participants that their presence sends a statement to the world.
“We will never again march to Auschwitz without being able to walk out,” she said.
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