At Auschwitz, former chief rabbi Lau calls on Diaspora Jews to move to Israel

At Auschwitz-Birkenau, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau calls on the thousands of Diaspora Jews there commemorating the Holocaust to immigrate to Israel.

“We have a home, and that is Israel. So I tell all of you wonderful Jewish youth: Come home. Come live in Israel,” says Lau, a former chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel, who is a Poland-born Holocaust survivor.

Lau, 86, notes the rise of antisemitism globally after the October 7 Hamas onslaught, before he lights the first of seven memorial torches on a stage at Birkenau.

Six of the torches commemorate the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The seventh is a reference to the victims of the October 7 massacre.

“You would think that they would love us, they would cherish us,” says Lau about non-Jews in countries where antisemitism is rising. “But then we see the news. We must remain together to be strong. Am Israel Chai.”

Nate Leipciger, a 96-year-old survivor who was born in Poland and lives in New York, lights the second torch, noting that he worked at Auschwitz as a prisoner 81 years ago. This is his 20th March of the Living, “and I hope it’s not the last one for me,” he says as the audience applauds.

He is followed by six Holocaust survivors from Israel who light the third torch. Their lives were affected directly by the October 7 onslaught, where some of them lost relatives and other had to flee their homes.

Descendants of rescuers of Jews from the Holocaust also light a torch at the ceremony.