April 12, 2010 / 28 Nissan 5770 

Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, flanked by Israel’s former Chief Rabbi and government ministers, led a group of over 10,000 on the annual March of the Living at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camp in Poland, marking Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 12, 2010.

“It is easy to say that the lessons of Auschwitz have been learned.  It is easy to say those two magic words, 'Never Again,'” Sharansky said, addressing the marchers, mostly Jewish young adults from Israel and abroad. “The hard part is giving those words meaning.  That is our challenge. That is your challenge.”

“Our grandparents and their grandparents and all our ancestors chose to stay Jewish -- despite all the persecutions.  Will we be determined enough and strong enough to make that same choice?   Will we be as true to our identities living in freedom as they were living in fear?”

This year’s March marks the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II and honors the memory of the million and a half children who were killed during the Holocaust. Israel’s former Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, who led this year’s march with Sharansky, was among those who survived the Holocaust as a child.

Sharansky also invited several young adults from Israel to join him on the march, including Israeli tennis champ Shachar Peer, who came with her grandmother, Yuliana Eckstein, an Auschwitz survivor, and IDF Lieutenant Bensigizi Avraham, an immigrant from Ethiopia who does her army service as a counselor at Nativ, the Jewish Agency program to strengthen the Jewish identity of IDF soldiers.

Photo credit: Yossi Zeliger

For full text of speech see:
http://www.jewishagency.org/JewishAgency/English/About/Press+Room/Press+Releases/2010/apr12.htm

For photo in high resolution see:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33840457@N04/4515251831