“This year, for the first time in 32 years, we are not able to march in Auschwitz-Birkenau,” says Dr. Shmuel Rosenman, world chair of the March of the Living, “but that will not stop us. We will continue to educate the next generation with the values we have been teaching for three decades.”
Due to the Coronavirus world pandemic, the 2020 March of the Living will not take place on Holocaust Remembrance Day, but the organization remains committed to advancing the educational message of the March despite the cancellation of this year’s march. In that spirit, Rosenman today announced “#NeverMeansNever”, a unique global Holocaust remembrance project that allows individuals around the world to participate in one of the most meaningful personal moments of the March by composing a personal message, and ‘placing it’ against the backdrop of the infamous train tracks at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
The project reflects the ongoing determination of the March of the Living to promote the importance of memory by utilizing innovative technology to teach the timeless lessons of the Holocaust. Rosenman added, “Our commitment to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and to future generations is that we will always be here to remind the world of the most horrific event in the history of humanity and the appalling consequences of racism and antisemitism.”
The March of the Living is the largest annual international experiential Holocaust education program in the world and has taken place in Poland without interruption since its inception in 1988. Each year thousands of participants from 150 communities around the globe participate in the March, including survivors, students, adults, liberators and educators from the United States, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Panama, Italy, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Hungary, France, Australia and Poland. To date, more than 260,000 March of the Living participants have walked the 3.2 kilometers from Auschwitz to Birkenau in tribute to the greatest loss in the history of the Jewish people and all humanity.
