Freed hostages and survivors will join Holocaust survivors for an April 24 March of the Living (MOTL) procession in Poland marking 80 years since the liberation of the Nazi death and work camps and will be led by President Isaac Herzog, first lady Michal Herzog, and Polish President Andrzej Duda.
The hostages joining the commemoration of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust will include those freed in recent deals with their Hamas captors. Last year’s march saw a special delegation of hostage family members, but 2025 will be the first to welcome an official delegation of captives and survivors of the worst pogrom against Jews since the Nazi genocide.
Herzog and Duda will lead the Holocaust Memorial Day event alongside 40 Holocaust survivors from Israel and another 40 from around the world, the organizers announced on Tuesday. The survivors, aged 80 to 97, endured the crucibles of Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Dachau, and Theresienstadt, in hiding, or fighting as partisans in forests.
They will be joined by their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in the silent mass march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, a contrast to the forced death marches inflicted on Holocaust victims that organizers said in a press release was symbolic of “the triumph of life over death.”
“Marching in the March of the Living is a way to close the circle and fulfill the testament of my comrades in the Jewish Combat Organization – to tell their story of their heroism,” Warsaw Ghetto fighter Aliza Vitis-Shomron said ahead of the event.
“We have proven to the world, and to the Germans, that we survived the inferno, the valley of death, and that we built families who will march with us in the March of the Living, bringing pride to the State of Israel.”
The 80th anniversary event will reportedly pay tribute to the Allied forces led by its future president, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who MOTL said had worked to ensure that the world would not forget the Nazi atrocities to which he bore witness.
The general’s great-grandson, Merrill Eisenhower, is set to march alongside the survivors freed by his ancestor’s forces, including Buchenwald survivor Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, who met the general upon the camp’s liberation.
Herzog has his own family connection to Eisenhower, as his grandfather, Israel’s first chief rabbi, Yitzhak Isaac Halevi Herzog met with the general in 1946 as part of a mission to help ravaged European Jewry. Herzog’s father, former president Chaim Herzog, had served as a British Army officer and participated in the liberation of camps.
Other dignitaries joining the annual march, according to organizers, will include World Zionist Organization chair Yaakov Hagoel, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund chair Ifat Ovadia-Luski, Argentina Holocaust Museum chair Marcelo Mindlin, Menomadin Foundation president Haim Taib, and Pastor John Hagee and his wife Diana.
High-tech company representatives to join MOTL
MOTL chair Dr. Shmuel Rosenman and its president, Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, said in a statement there would be a contingent of hi-tech company representatives.
“The commitment of hi-tech companies to enabling survivors to march alongside the president of the State of Israel and their families is an inspiring example of social responsibility and a deep commitment to ensuring Holocaust remembrance for future generations,” said the MOTL leaders.
The representatives include Wix president Nir Zohar, Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman, JFrog CEO Shlomi Ben Haim, Matrix CEO Moti Gutman, Pitango founding partner Rami Kalish, and Qumra Capital CFO Sharon Barzik Cohen.
Rosenman and Heideman noted that the participation of 80 survivors was “an extraordinary achievement, especially given the dwindling number of survivors each year.”