“I can’t stress enough what a transformative experience it was… I’ve returned reinvigorated, motivated and inspired to be more involved in the Jewish community.”

Abby Hayton

2013 March:
3rd-9th April 2013

From all corners of the world, 10,000 gather.

The Trip

In 2011, we visited the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Majdanek. We also visited historic Jewish sites in Warsaw, (the Ghetto Memorial, Mila 18, the Jewish Cemetery, the restored Nozyk Synagogue) Cracow (the Jewish Quarter, the Ramah Synagogue) and Lublin (the famous Yeshiva). The highlight was the March of the Living. Prior to the March, we travelled as part of a small group, often forming strong and important relationships as we supported each other on this emotional journey.

By taking part in these special events, the group shared unforgettable moments in Jewish history and bear witness to the undying spirit of the Jewish people. Like those who participated in the last twenty Marches, we all returned home with a new sense of our people and our history. And from the feedback we received, it’s clear that it will be an experience that will remain with everyone for a lifetime.

The March of the Living will bring together Jewish people from over 40 countries and regions around the world including Israel, USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Panama, South Africa, France, Sweden, Hungary and Poland. The fact that the 10,000 Marchers come from all points of the world creates an amazing sense of Jewish togetherness.

POLAND

For over one thousand years there has been a Jewish presence in Poland. Throughout that period, there followed alternating periods of peace and persecution. During the latter, there were mass Jewish emigrations to the West – nevertheless by the 20th century, Jews formed 10% of the population of Poland.

On September 1st 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and over the next five years Poland would become a graveyard for the Jews of Europe. In 1939 there were 3.3 million Jews living within the Polish borders, by 1945 only 300000 were left. The great synagogues burnt, thousand of Jewish buildings and prayer houses razed to the ground, ancient cemeteries uprooted, tens of thousands of books and ritual objects destroyed...an entire civilisation decimated.

All the Nazi extermination camps were in Poland including the largest concentration camp, Auschwitz.

Today Poland has seen a re-emergence of Jewish culture and life. Old Synagogues are being returned to communities, often to be used as museums. Across Poland there are hundreds of monuments and exhibitions dedicated to the Jews of pre war Poland and the Shoah. In our learning of the Holocaust we must always realise that to know what was lost we must know what was there before.

WARSAW

Jews had settled in Warsaw as early as the 14th century.

Before the 2nd World War, Warsaw was the largest and most important Jewish center in Europe. Nearly 400,000 Jews made up 1/3 of the total population of Warsaw. In October 1939 the German’s enacted anti-Jewish measures. One year later , on Yom Kippur 1940 the Nazis announced the building of Jewish residential quarters. 30% of the city’s population were to be confined to an area comprising of 2.4% of city land. The population of the ghetto at its height reached more than 500000.

The first deportations began in January 1943 to Treblinka. On April 19 1943, in anticipation of a third wave of deportations, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began. It took almost a whole month to liquidate the ghetto but by June 1943 Warsaw was empty of its Jewish population. Warsaw was liberated in January 1945 and less than 5000 Jews were found alive in the city.

TREBLINKA

Treblinka lies just 50 miles northeast of Warsaw on the rail line of Warsaw to Bialystock. Established as part of the Aktion Reinhard in June 1942 the first transports arrived on July 22nd 1942. In between that July and 17th November 1943 more than 800,000 Jews lost their lives.

Today some 17000 symbolic tombstones are arranged around a central pillar, each jagged stone representing a town whose Jews were killed. Only one stone commemorates a single person, Janusz Korczak, who ran a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw and was sent to Treblinka and murdered with the children in July 1942.

KAZIMIERZ DOLNY

Kazimierz Dolny, situated on the Vistula River has been a home for Jewish families since medieval times. Before 1939, Jews made up about 65% of the town. A large market square stands as the center of the town, rebuilt today to maintain its outer appearance, it still has the feel of an old market town.

The old Synagogue was returned to the Jewish community and is now a museum. Just outside of the town stands a monument on the site of the New Cemetery.

LUBLIN

The Germans entered Lublin on September 18th 1939 when the Jewish population was close to 40000. Lublin had long had a history of being a center of learning Talmud and Kabala. Strong Hasidic traditions with many famous yeshivas, including Meir Shapiro’s which opened only 9 years before the invasion.

Lublin became a center for mass extermination during the holocaust, 30000 Jews were deported to Belzec or murdered in the nearby forests. The final deportations took place in November 1943 to nearby Majdanek. Lublin was liberated by the Russian army on July 24th 1944.

MAJDANEK

Majdanek concentration camp is situated a mere 2 miles from the center of Lublin. Its name derived from the name of the suburb it resided in. It opened as a labor camp in 1941 but later, as Jews began arriving, became a death camp until liberation on July 22 1944. It is estimated that between 80000 and 120000 Jews were murdered there , those who didn’t dies of starvation or illness, were often hanged, shot or gassed. The biggest mass murder happened on 3rd November 1943 when 16000 Jews were taken to the fields at the back of the camp and shot. Today Majdanek stands almost intact as the Nazis had no time to destroy the camp when the Russians arrived.

KRAKOW

Krakow was one of the largest Jewish centers in Poland, with more than 65000 Jews there just before the war. Post Holocaust the Jewish population was less than 3000. Unlike Warsaw, Krakow was hardly damaged during the war, its Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, is one of Europe’s richest and most important areas of Jewish monuments. Most of the sites in Kazimierz are grouped around 2 squares, where several synagogues are located and the once vibrant Jewish marketplace.

On the edge of Krakow stands the infamous Plaszow concentration camp, well known as it was here that Oskar Schindler saved 700 Jews by putting them on a work list.

AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

The biggest and most notorious complex of Nazi concentration and extermination camps were located about 40 miles west of Krakow. Auschwitz 1 was the base camp, Auschwitz 2 – Birkenau, the extermination camp and Auschwitz 3-Monowitz, a labor camp. There were also 45 satellite camps.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was designated by Himmler as the locus of the ‘ final solution ‘. From spring 1942 until the fall of 1944 trains delivered Jews daily to be exterminated. Auschwitz has become synonymous with the Holocaust, and the notorious ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ slogan over the main gate is possibly the most well known image from the Shoah.

Up to 1.5 million people were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau, approximately 90% Jews. There were also many other nationalities deported there, Poles, Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war. Those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, disease or medical experiments.

Auschwitz was liberated on January 27th 1945 by the Soviet army.

March of the Living is a remarkable annual event which has involved hundreds of thousands of participants from all over the world - but not from the uk. Now that is set to change.

THE MARCH OF THE LIVING is an international, educational program that brings Jewish people from all over the world to Poland on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, to march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest concentration camp complex built during World War II.

The UK has been notable by its absence, having not sent any significant number of participants to date. In 2010, MARCH OF THE LIVING UK was formed to encourage the same levels of participation and education as enjoyed by other Jewish communities throughout the world.

Our Mission

The mission of the March of the Living is to challenge a new generation of Jews with one of the most significant events of Jewish history - the Shoah (The Holocaust). It is achieved by bringing Jewish people to many of the key places where these events took place, in order to understand the world, and the lives, that were destroyed. This is intensified by sharing these experiences with Holocaust survivors.

The mission is to create memories, leading to a revitalised commitment to Judaism, Israel and the Jewish People. It will allow March’ers to educate their peers about the Holocaust and to fight those who would deny its history. Indeed, much of the significance of the trip for participants will be after it is over, when these leadership roles will be encouraged and developed.

The unique mission of the March is to bring together Jews from different countries and cultures, secular and religious, and of every religious denomination, to share a common Jewish experience. Many of the future world Jewish leadership will have participated in the March, which will strengthen their connection to each other.

Partnership Organizations

                
   www.ujs.org.uk                            www.jlgb.org

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Anita Ekstein

I Anita Helfgott Ekstein, MOL 1996, 1998, 2000

I was a child of seven when the Nazis came to our town in Poland. We had been occupied by the Soviets for nearly the first two years of the war.

We were taken to a ghetto in a larger town. My parents went daily to different work sites, in the fall of 1942 my mother was picked up on the street in the ghetto. My father in desperation approached a Polish man, a Catholic who was a stock keeper at the site of a railway bridge where my father was working and asked him to save his child.

Josef Matusiewicz was a stranger, he had not known my father for long and did not know me. It took a great deal of courage and determination and faith in G-d, to take a risk to save a Jewish child. There were stringent edicts punishable by death for helping a Jew.

I was taken to his family a wife and eighteen year old daughter, given a new name and taught to be a Catholic. Several months later I was denounced by a neighbour and had to be returned to my father. I spent seven weeks hidden in a wardrobe, and rescued for the second time by the same man. I was taken to his nephew a Catholic priest close to the Russian border, where I remained for the next two years.

My father did not survive. In 1946 I was reunited with my aunt and left Poland, hoping to immigrate to United States where I had family. It was not possible at the time to obtain an U.S. visa, and so in 1948 I arrived in Canada. I was fourteen years old. Today I have three children and eight grandchildren, because one person made a choice to save my life.

I have dedicated the last fourteen years to educate young people to the evils of anti-Semitism, racism and bigotry, and where it could lead. I hope to impart to them that we have a choice in life, not to be a perpetrator or a bystander, but to step forward and have the courage to do the right thing. I had the privilege of being a survivor chaperone on the March of the Living three times, I have met and bonded with wonderful young people, and my hope is that they will never forget, and continue to remind the world when we survivors are no longer here.

Freddie Knoller

Freddie Knoller was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Vienna in 1921.  He was an excellent cellist, playing in a chamber music trio with his two brothers Otto and Erich. He remembers suffering antisemitic abuse before 1938, and joined a Zionist group because he dreamed of a place where there was no antisemitism.

With the Nazi takeover in 1938, the circumstances of Vienna’s Jews deteriorated rapidly. Freddie saw Jews beaten and made to scrub the streets with toothbrushes. Some of his former friends became Nazi supporters. On Kristallnacht (9 November 1938), the local synagogue was burnt down and one of the Knollers’s Jewish neighbours was killed.  Freddie’s parents agreed that their children should leave Austria.  Freddie decided to join his cousins in Belgium, and both his brothers managed to reach America.  But their parents were unable to leave Austria, and both were later murdered in Auschwitz.

After he had illegally crossed the Belgian border, 'separation, hiding, moving, hunger, exhaustion, official questioning' filled Freddie’s life for the next five years. In 1939 he stayed at several refugee camps, receiving support from Jewish Aid Committees.  He was briefly reunited with his cousins and played in camp orchestras with the cello that his parents had sent him. But panic followed the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940, and Freddie joined the mass of refugees heading for France.  He was forced to leave his cello behind, losing 'the part of me which had tied me to my life in Vienna, and to my parents'.

When he entered France, holding a German passport, Freddie was placed in St Cyprien internment camp as an Enemy Alien and forced to live in appalling conditions. Freddie escaped from the camp in June 1940, meeting his cousins again in Gaillac before making his way to Paris in late 1940.

There, given temporary shelter by a Parisian Jewish family, Freddie posed as a Frenchman from Alsace to become a ‘guide’ to German soldiers visiting the red-light district. In May 1942 he witnessed the round-up and deportation of the French Jews and was shocked by the collaboration and antisemitism of the French police. In July 1943 Freddie was taken in for questioning by the Gestapo and although he was released, he decided to leave Paris.

 

Freddie travelled to Figeac in south-west France in July 1943 to fight with the resistance, helping to blow up a German troop train before being arrested by the Vichy police in September. Rather than denounce his comrades, Freddie confessed that he was a Jew and was handed over to the Gestapo.

Freddie was taken to the Drancy transit camp and in October 1943 his name appeared on a list of those to be deported to work in the East. He was packed into a crowded cattle-wagon with little water or fresh air. ‘We were actually made into sub-humans’, constantly beaten and humiliated by the SS.

He arrived at Auschwitz, where he spent most of 1944. Freddie was selected as one of those fit to work, which meant that he was not gassed immediately on arrival. A number was tattooed on his arm: ‘157103 is your name’ the guards told him. His work consisted of carrying sacks of cement all day. On one occasion Freddie strayed into a forbidden part of the camp, and was beaten with an iron rod as punishment.  He attributes his survival to the extra rations he managed to obtain, and to his eternal optimism.

In December 1944, with the Red Army approaching Auschwitz, Freddie was forced to march to the slave labour camp near Nordhausen known as Dora. He swapped his Jewish badge for that of a French political prisoner who had died, which helped him to survive. Early in 1945, Dora was abandoned to the advancing American forces and its workers transferred to Bergen-Belsen. In the chaotic final weeks of war, all systems broke down.  Disease and starvation gripped the camp, with inmates dying everywhere.  The Americans liberated the camp in April 1945.

Freddie was reunited with his brothers after the war.  Between 1947 and 1952 he lived in the USA, where he met his British-born wife.  Together, they settled in London. In 2000 his story was published under the title 'Desperate Journey: Vienna, Paris, Auschwitz'.

Max (Tibor) Eisen

MAX (TIBOR) EISEN
(as told to Eli Rubenstein prior to the 1998 March of the Living.)
Toronto, Ontario
Participated on the March in 1998.

I was born in Moldava, Czechoslovakia in 1929 into a large religious family. I was deported to Auschwitz from Moldava (which was then in Hungary) in 1944, at age 15, where I was imprisoned from May 1944 until January 1945.

My immediate and extended family was made up of approximately sixty persons which included my parents, two younger brothers and a baby sister, three grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Three of us survived, myself and two cousins. One cousin lives in Israel and the other in the U.S.A.

Prior to the end of my stay in Auschwitz, I had been assigned to the prisoners’ operating room where I worked for the last four months. I recall the chief surgeon in the operating room was a Polish political prisoner, Dr. Orzesko. This job allowed me to keep myself clean and better fed then most of the prisoners in Auschwitz. As a result I had a better chance to survive the forthcoming death march.

On a black freezing night, January 18, l945, those prisoners who were able to walk were forced to march out of Auschwitz. There were SS guards with dogs and guns on both sides of the column of prisoners. We had no idea where we were being taken, whether it was to be shot or marched to death in the cold. The prisoners were wearing wooden clogs and were slipping in the snow. Many prisoners were shot when they could not keep up the pace or had dropped out from exhaustion. It was total chaos.

By this date the Russian front was only a few kilometres away from Auschwitz. The sky was lit up by artillery explosions and other sounds of war were all around us. It gave me hope. But the guards were pushing us hard as they were afraid of the approaching Soviet army.

Ironically, a little while before the march, some prisoners were brought into Auschwitz from neighboring camps including some people from my town of Moldava who were in my barrack. They were so emaciated from overwork and starvation in a camp called Buna they could no longer stand on their feet. I begged them to come to the assembly for the march for I feared that they would all be liquidated, but it was in vain. They could not do so. It turned out that they were liberated by the Soviet army only four days later while I endured four more torturous months.

We were slipping and sliding, walking five abreast with arms locked together. We walked the entire night and following day without stopping. I couldn’t imagine how long we could go on like this. Yet, for four or five days we continued to march without food or water. As we went along the road, I managed to pick up a few handfuls of snow and put it in my mouth to keep some moisture in me. We walked, barely conscious. All of a sudden I could feel the person who was marching next to me hanging down on my arm and the arm of the person on his other side. When we realized this person was dead, we just dropped him. When a prisoner dropped out of the column, a guard usually dispatched a bullet into his head to make sure he was dead. I guess this was the rule.

As the march continued we turned black from frost. All we had on our bodies were the striped prisoners’ garb. We had no gloves. We had little caps, but nothing to protect our ears. I managed to find a paper cement bag which I put under my top. This helped a lot. As in my days in Auschwitz, to be resourceful meant life.

ne night we were brought into a large farm with huge stables that housed big storage places for straw. It was a relief to burrow into the straw and experience a few hours of rest. I kept thinking that maybe I should hide myself in the straw but I was really scared. I was in Poland and I didn’t feel secure to do so wearing prisoner garb and not knowing the local language.

The next morning we were marched again, this time to Loslau. There we were loaded onto metal boxcars made for transporting coal so there was no top to them. When we climbed over the sides to get in, it was so cold we just about froze to the metal. We were packed into the boxcars like sardines in a can.

Chaim Fuks (Harry Fox)

Harry was born in Poland, in the small town of Tuszyn which is twelve miles from the centre of Lodz.

Family life was full and vibrant, and as well as having an older brother and younger sister, there were about a hundred members of his extended family in the same town, where on his father’s side they had lived for ten generations.

At the beginning of the war Harry was nine years old, and on the first day the Germans came in dishing out sweets to the children. Within a day or two restrictions began for the Jewish community. Life became progressively harsher until at 2am on the night of 30 November 1939, the Nazis burst into his lovely home, yelling, shooting and screaming at the family that they had two hours to get out or be shot.

All the Jews of Tuszyn were forced to leave on that night and they were sent to the town of Piotrkow where the first Jewish Ghetto in Poland was formed. The temperature that night was minus twenty and some children and others froze to death on the road.

Harry’s parents worked hard in the Ghetto and did all they could to keep the family going. The children were given jobs also, especially those of the Ghetto ‘illegally’ in order to trade with the Poles and bring in extra food and other necessities.

On 14 October 1942, the Piotrkow Ghetto was liquidated. Harry’s father and brother had been working for a time in glass factories and just the day before his father had also obtained a work permit for Harry. This permit saved his life as all those without one, including his mother, young sister and most of the Tuszyn extended family were sent by train to their deaths, in the Extermination Camp of Treblinka.

Harry worked with his father and brother in glass factories until 1944, when they were moved to the Czestochowianka slave labour camp. After a number of weeks, they were moved on to Buchenwald Concentration Camp, then on to the complex of camps serving Dora, where the V1 and V2 rockets were made. One of these camps was the notorious camp of Nordhausen, where Harry’s father died. Life expectancy in Nordhausen was three weeks.

Early in 1945 Harry and his brother were amongst those sent off on a Death March. In February, they were sleeping in a field outside Dresden when the city was bombed. At the start of the March there were about three thousand people but by the end of it, when they walked into the camp at Theresienstadt, forty five people remained and they were all in a most pitiable condition. Two weeks later, they were liberated by the Russians and in August 1945, they came to England with a group that became known as ‘The Boys’.