March of the Living

March of the Living
Young people marching between Auschwitz and Birkenau, 2008
March of the Living, Auschwitz, 2005
March of the Living, between Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2005
Canadian students raise the Israeli flag near the Masoluem at Majdanek on the 1990 March of the Living

When You Listen to a Witness - poster for UN exhibit, 2014

Seventy Years - poster for UN exhibit

The March of the Living (Hebrew: מצעד החיים‎) is an annual educational program which brings students from around the world to Poland, where they explore the remnants of the Holocaust. On Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom HaShoah), thousands of participants march silently from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp complex built during World War II.

The program was established in 1988 and takes place annually for two weeks around April and May, immediately following Passover. Marchers come from countries as diverse as Estonia, New Zealand, Panama, and Turkey.

The climax of the program is the March, which is designed to contrast with the death marches which occurred towards the end of World War II. When Nazi Germany withdrew its soldiers from forced-labour camps, inmates – usually already starving and stricken by oppressive work – were forced to march hundreds of miles further west, while those who lagged behind or fell were shot. The March of the Living, in contrast to the death marches, serves to illustrate the continued existence of world Jewry despite Nazi Germany's attempts at their obliteration.

After spending a week in Poland visiting other sites of Nazi Germany's persecution and former sites of Jewish life and culture, many of the participants in the March also travel on to Israel where they observe Yom Hazikaron (Israel's Remembrance Day) and celebrate Yom Haatzmaut (Israel's Independence Day).