Anti-Israel activists on Monday protested near Auschwitz, where thousands of Jewish individuals marched to commemorate Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Activists waved Palestinian flags and held a banner that read “Stop the genocide in Gaza.” Protesters shouted “free Palestine” as Jews gathered in Poland to commemorate the day with the annual March of the Living — a two-mile walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau to honor the lives of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. This year, survivors of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel marched alongside thousands of other Jews.
“We marched today to give a voice to the six million victims of the Nazis’ industrial genocide of the Jewish people. We marched with survivors of the Nazi atrocities as well as survivors of Hamas’ crimes and families of those still held in captivity,” the International March of the Living said in a statement. “The half a dozen protestors who perversely saw this as an opportunity to voice hatred against Israel and the Jewish people serve as a timely reminder of the importance of Holocaust education and remembrance, and of teaching the dangers of hatred and extremism.”
One protester shouted, “Ceasefire now!” and lectured Jews about the meaning of “genocide,” the Times of Israel reported.
“How dare you disrespect the victims of the Holocaust by cheering, as a new genocide is happening in Gaza,” she yelled at marchers. “Your mothers are watching you! Show some respect.”
This year’s memorial holds significant meaning for Holocaust survivors who, having lived through mass eradication decades ago, are now facing a new threat from Iranian-backed terrorist groups. Bellha Haim, for example, is an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor whose grandson Yotam was taken hostage by Hamas and accidentally shot dead by the Israeli Defense Forces who “believed that [he] was a Hamas terrorist attempting to lure them into a trap.”
Bellha and her family escaped Poland during World War II. She has not been back to Poland since, but decided to participate in the March of the Living this year, in Yotam’s memory.
“I never went back, and I wasn’t convinced to go back,” she said. “But this time, when they told me that they were connecting the Holocaust and what I call the ‘Holocaust of October 7’ — because then in the Holocaust we [Jews] were not a united people, we didn’t have a country, and suddenly this pride of mine that has been broken, my pride in my people and my country that was shattered in front of my eyes — I said, ‘This time I will break my oath and I will go out.'”
“I will go out in the name of Yotam, who marched there when he was in high school, and I will go out there to shout out the cry of the slain, of the babies, of all my good friends that I will never meet again,” Bellha added.