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May 13, 2005
March connects generations
Students and survivors join together for commemorative annual
event.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
More than 18,000 people from around the world – including
more than 1,000 Canadians – remembered Holocaust victims on
a march from the Polish town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz) to the site
of the Birkenau concentration camp last week.
The event was part of March of the Living – an annual pilgrimage
made mostly by young people seeking a connection to their Jewish
roots. Canadian participants attended under the aegis of UIA (United
Israel Appeal) Federations Canada. The goal of the program is to
unite different faith and ethnic groups to honor Holocaust victims
and survivors. Multi-cultural student groups, teachers and a number
of politicians also took part. Many of the participants went on
to spend a week in Israel.
Among those who participated in the march were three young people
from Vancouver. They shared their experiences of the event with
the Bulletin.
Bram Neuman's grandfather, Otto Farkas, is a Holocaust survivor
from Debrecen, Hungary. Neuman, a student at the University of British
Columbia, said his visit to Poland was "very moving ... as
a Jewish person and grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, I was already
exposed to the Holocaust. But being here, in Poland, on the March
of the Living, you put yourself in the mindset of the people who
suffered.
"Standing in the barracks and the gas chambers, you realize
how killing was an industry for the Nazis. You realize how they
how dehumanized people – how they removed their hair, confiscated
their crutches ... how they took away their human identity. They
had it down to a science."
Kara Mintzberg is also a UBC student. Her grandparents made it to
Canada before the war. Having been on the march, she said, "I
can now take on the responsibility to retell these stories of the
Holocaust to others, to the children that I work with in camps,
to anyone who has an interest in the Holocaust and even to anyone
who denies the Holocaust. By going on this trip, I have become a
living testimony to the history of the Holocaust."
"My most meaningful moment on the trip occurred with our survivor,
Esther Rath," said Andrea Sorin of Richmond (now a history
student at the University of Victoria). "She was having trouble
lighting the memorial candles for her murdered family members in
the crematoria in the rubble in Auschwitz-Birkenau, so I helped
her light the candles in honor of her relatives.
"This was her first time back to Poland and I think her message
to us was this: 'I have overcome some much and I am so happy you
are all here with me.' I think it made her feel proud to be Jewish,
to be alive and to be here with all these different people."
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