Tuesday, July 22, marks the 83rd anniversary of the start of the mass deportation of Jews from the ghetto to the Nazi German Treblinka extermination camp.
An estimated 300,000 Jews were taken to the camp's gas chambers within the course of two months.
The deportation operation ended on September 21, 1942, although trains also departed for Treblinka during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which took place from April 19 to May 16, 1943.
This year’s March of Remembrance, the 14th event of its kind, started at 6 p.m at the Umschlagplatz, a collection point where Jews were assembled for deportation. It then proceeded along the streets of Warsaw’s prewar Jewish district.
The event was attended by officials including Israel's ambassador to Poland, Yaakov Finkelstein, and Polish Deputy Culture Minister Maciej Wróbel.
The Jewish Historical Institute, which has organized the march since 2012, describes its route as a symbolic "from death to life" experience, with the participants carrying Ribbons of Memory with the names of murdered Jews.
Marchers walked along a symbolic route along the streets of Warsaw’s prewar Jewish district. Many of them carried Ribbons of Memory with the names of murdered Jews. Photo: PAP/Leszek Szymański
The event included a tribute to Warsaw Ghetto musicians, among them Władysław Szpilman, the acclaimed pianist, composer and Holocaust survivor whose life inspired the Oscar-winning film The Pianist.
Image: Jewish Historical Institute/Press kit
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Source: PAP