With the number of Holocaust survivors dwindling, thousands are expected to be in attendance for the annual March of the Living on April 24th, walking the somber path from Auschwitz to Birkenau to mark Yom Hashoah.
For Jewish visitors planning to attend this year’s March of the Living, practical concerns like finding kosher food will be one less worry, as the Auschwitz Jewish Center prepares to open its first kosher concession stand.
Located just a mile from the concentration camp where over a million Jews were murdered, approximately 800,000 visitors have passed through the Center, which occupies the only synagogue that survived Nazi occupation.
Until now, kosher-observant visitors needed to bring their own food or arrange catering in advance, but beginning April 23rd the Center will begin offering packaged, shelf-stable kosher meals.
Oświęcim, the Polish town renamed Auschwitz by the Nazis, was once home to a vibrant Jewish community comprising more than half its population.
Over 30 synagogues once stood here, along with numerous kosher butchers, bakeries, and restaurants.
“Opening the city’s first post-war kosher concession was a natural step, ensuring that kosher-observant visitors could pray or reflect in our synagogue while also enjoying a kosher meal,” Auschwitz Jewish Centre Foundation Chairman Simon Bergson tells Jewish News.
With the number of Holocaust survivors dwindling, thousands are expected to be in attendance for the annual March of the Living on April 24th, walking the somber path from Auschwitz to Birkenau to mark Yom Hashoah.
“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,” says Aliza Vitis-Shomron, one of the last surviving fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
“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.”
Leading the march alongside Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Polish President Andrzej Duda will be 40 Holocaust survivors from Israel as well as another 40 survivors from around the world.
Marching alongside them will be their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, symbolizing the triumph of life over death.
President Herzog’s family has deep connections to the Holocaust. His father, Chaim Herzog, who also served as Israel’s president from 1983 to 1993, was a British Army officer who participated in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Herzog’s grandfather, Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Halevi Herzog, who served as Chief Rabbi of Israel, met with General Eisenhower in 1946 during his one of many missions to rescue Jewish survivors across Europe.