The March of the Living (MOTL) is an annual educational program which brings students from all over the world to Poland to study the history of the Holocaust and to examine the roots of prejudice, intolerance and hate.

The March of the Living itself, a 3-kilometre walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau, is a silent tribute to all victims of the Holocaust. The March is designed to contrast with the death marches, which began towards the end of World War II, and continued virtually up until the Third Reich’s last days. The Nazis forced approximately 750,000 prisoners, almost half of whom were Jewish, onto the death marches.

The March of the Living serves as a hopeful counterpoint to the experience of hundreds of thousands of Jews and others forced by the Nazis to cross vast expanses of European terrain under the harshest of conditions, where many of them perished.

In Poland, their program includes visits to once thriving sites of Jewish life and culture as well as sites of Jewish persecution and martyrdom.

Then, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the students march arm in arm with Holocaust survivors from Auschwitz to Birkenau. They are joined by thousands of other people of goodwill – of diverse backgrounds and faiths – as they march side by side in memory of all victims of Nazi genocide and against prejudice, intolerance and hate.

A key element of the program is the participation of Holocaust survivors who share the memory of their wartime experiences with the young people in the very places where they unfolded. There is a greater urgency to encourage more students to take part in the program in the coming years, while the survivors are still well enough to participate in this challenging trip.