From the Liveblog of
Monday, May 6, 2024
Hostages, campus antisemitism loom large on minds of March of Living participants at Auschwitz
Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter
AUSCHWITZ — Chanting “bring them back,” dozens of Jewish university students from Canada march through the Auschwitz former Nazi camp in Poland while holding up posters of hostages held in Gaza.
“It’s all part of the same thing. The hostages were abducted for the same reason people were murdered here. For being Jewish,” student Evylyn Gorodetzky tells The Times of Israel, explaining the statement she and her friends are making at the annual March of the Living event.
Thousands of Jews ranging from teenagers to Holocaust survivors attend the annual march, which takes place this year in the shadow of the war which began when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, with terrorists murdering some 1,200 people in Israel and abducting another 252. Dozens of hostages remain in captivity amid fighting in Gaza with negotiations apparently collapsing for a deal that would see their release.
The posters of the hostages came from the Canadian delegation of high school students, Gorodetzky says.
She and other university students say the situation on campuses in Canada is “bad,” “tough, and “terrible,” when asked about antisemitism.
“We’re vocal and we fight,” says Gorodetzky.
“It’s much more about Israel and October 7 this year,” says Tania Stelman Lowy, an educator from Belgium. She heads delegations of Belgian Jews who do not go to Jewish schools and therefore lack the framework for attending the march, which happens annually on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. Her delegation has 45 students this year.
Benjamin Signer, an 18-year-old high school student from Los Angeles, was supposed to travel with participants in the march from his Jewish school from Poland to Israel after the march, but the Israel leg was canceled after October 7, he says.
“It’s disappointing but it makes this experience, which to me is about Jewish unity, even more significant,” he says.
The unity he sees, Signer adds, “is important because of the isolation we feel as Jews right now. It gives strength going forward in life.”
