An annual remembrance of the Holocaust at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps was protested on Monday by Palestine flag-flying activists, who confronted and shouted at attendees.
Thousands of people attended the 36th ‘March of the Living’ event on Monday, a normally silent march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the German death camps built in occupied Poland during the Second World War, key sites of the Holocaust. Among those at Auschwitz yesterday, Germany’s Die Welt broadsheet newspaper reports, were 55 survivors of the Holocaust, survivors of the October 7th Israel massacre, and relatives of those taken hostage by Hamas.
The march was protested by Palestine activists, with slogans shouted and some marchers confronted. Organisers of the march say the counter protesters saw the event as a ‘perverse’ opportunity to “express their hatred against Israel and the Jewish people”. This serves as a “timely reminder of the importance of Holocaust eduction and remembrance”, they said.
You have to be particularly disgusting to protest outside a Death Camp. As always, the pro-terror mob rose to the challenge by protesting outside Auschwitz on #HolocaustMemorialDay pic.twitter.com/6903Y0g4n8
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) May 6, 2024
An organiser of the counter-protest cited by the Associated Press, Omar Faris, is quoted to have said: “Through this protest we want to say that we bow down to the victims of the Holocaust too… At the same time, we demand an end to war, an end to genocide.”
The Times of Israel reports the counter-protest, loud as it may have been, was dwarfed by the official event, with nine activists shouting at an estimated 8,000 attendees. It reports the protesters accused Israel of causing “another genocide”, shouting: “Are you not ashamed of what your government is doing?”.