Survivors warn that rising global antisemitism echoes lessons the world still struggles to learn.
KRAKOW, Poland—Scores of elderly Holocaust survivors from around the world, including a dozen from war-ravaged Israel, are in Poland this week for the annual March of the Living Holocaust memorial event, even as the war against Iran forced the cancellation of the official Israeli delegation.
The annual event, expected to draw some 7,000 participants in one of the world’s largest Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations, takes place on Tuesday amid a surge in global antisemitism following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
‘I’m saying the world has not learned anything’
The delegation of Holocaust survivors from Israel, aged 90–100, was brought to Poland at the eleventh hour on a hastily arranged charter flight from Tel Aviv following last week’s ceasefire. They said the regional turmoil caused by the war and the global rise in antisemitism had only strengthened their determination to take part in the symbolic march between the Auschwitz and Birkenau extermination camps, where about 1 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.