AUSCHWITZ, Poland - The wail of a Jewish shofar horn signalled the start Thursday of a huge march at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in southern Poland to remember victims of the Holocaust. "Today is the day of remembrance. Thousands of us from 50 countries around the world are going to march from Auschwitz to Birkenau to remember what happened here," the voice of one of the organisers of the March of the Living said over the loudspeaker system at Auschwitz shortly before the march began at 1:15 pm.
Dressed in blue anoraks the marchers passed through the notorious camp gate with its sign "Arbeit Macht Frei" at the start of the three-kilometre from the Auschwitz camp to Birkenau, where some 1.1 million Jews were gassed to death by the German Nazi regime which occupied most of Europe in World War II. A remembrance ceremony for the six million Jews, and countless others who died in the Holocaust, was to be held later in the day, attended by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his Polish and Hungarian counterparts Marek Belka and Ferenc Gyurcsany, and survivors of the German camps.
Thursday's commemoration, expected to attract a record 20,000 people, comes 60 years after the end of World War II and the liberation of the camps by allied forces.
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