Marking 80 Years Since Liberation, Presidents Herzog and Duda to Lead March of the Living with 80 Holocaust Survivors

Holocaust survivors to march together with a delegation from Israel’s high-tech sector in a shared journey of remembrance, resilience, and mutual responsibility

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, March 25, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The International March of the Living announced today that President of Israel Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog and President of Poland Andrzej Duda will lead the 2025 March of the Living in Poland on Yom HaShoah (April 24, 2025), marching from Auschwitz to Birkenau in solemn tribute to the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. This year’s March of the Living holds historical weight, marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Hitler’s camps and the end of World War II, with a call to uphold the legacy of the past and confront the rising tide of antisemitism worldwide.

This milestone event will pay tribute to the Allied forces, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who bore witness to Nazi atrocities to ensure that the world would never forget. In a historic moment of remembrance, Merrill Eisenhower, great-grandson of General Eisenhower, will join the march alongside Holocaust survivors who were freed by U.S. and Allied troops—including Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, a child survivor of Buchenwald who personally met General Eisenhower upon the camp’s liberation. The father of the President of Israel, President Chaim Herzog, was an officer in the British Army and took part in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. His grandfather, Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Halevi Herzog, who served as the Chief Rabbi of Israel, met with General Eisenhower in 1946 as part of his mission to save the Jews of Europe.

Leading the march alongside President Herzog and President Duda will be 40 Holocaust survivors from Israel, aged 80 to 97, including survivors of Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Dachau and Theresienstadt as well as those who survived the war in hiding or as partisans in the forests. They will be joined by another 40 survivors from around the world, making this one of the largest gatherings of living Holocaust survivors at Auschwitz in recent history. Marching alongside them will be their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, symbolizing the triumph of life over death.

Marching among the survivors will be Aliza Vitis-Shomron, one of the last surviving fighters of the Jewish Combat Organization in the Warsaw Ghetto. Ahead of her participation in the march, Aliza said: “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. 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 companies and foundations in both the global and Israel’s tech ecosystem, including Fiverr, Wix, JFrog, Payoneer, Riskified, Matrix, Taboola, Qumra Capital, Pitango, and the Merit Spread Foundation, have joined forces to support the delegation of Holocaust survivors traveling from Israel. Nir Zohar, President & COO at Wix; Micha Kaufman, CEO at Fiverr; Shlomi Ben Haim Co-Founder & CEO at JFrog; Moti Gutman, CEO at Matrix; Rami Kalish, Founding Partner at Pitango; and Sharon Barzik Cohen, Partner & CFO at Qumra Capital, will lead a delegation of dozens of employees from the high-tech sector. These two delegations symbolize the unbreakable link between past, present, and future, underscoring a deep commitment to remembrance, resilience and mutual responsibility in the fight against antisemitism—driven by a shared responsibility to build a safer future.

Dr. Shmuel Rosenman, and Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, Chair and President of the International March of the Living, called this year’s march a historic event due to the participation of 80 Holocaust survivors alongside the President of Israel: “This is an extraordinary achievement, especially given the dwindling number of survivors each year. The commitment of high-tech companies to enabling survivors to march alongside the President of the State of Israel and their families is an inspiring example of social responsibility and a deep commitment to ensuring Holocaust remembrance for future generations.”

The March of the Living is one of the flagship events marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. Additional prominent figures leading this year’s march include Ifat Ovadia-Luski, Chair of KKL; Haim Taib, Founder and President of the Menomadin Foundation; Pastor John Hagee and his wife Diana; and philanthropist Marcelo Mindlin, Chair of the Holocaust Museum in Argentina and Yaakov Hagoel, Chair of the World Zionist Organization.

Each year, thousands of participants join the march—Jewish and non-Jewish youth from dozens of countries around the world—alongside Holocaust survivors, heads of state, ministers, religious leaders, intellectuals, cultural figures, and more. To date, over 300,000 participants have walked along the railway tracks from Auschwitz to Birkenau, in tribute to the greatest loss in the history of the Jewish people and of humanity.

Raoul Wootliff
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