Conservative Candidate for Mayor of London, Shaun Bailey, joined the March of the Living in Poland this week, where more than 10,000 participants marched together from Auschwitz to Birkenau in memory of all victims of the Holocaust.
Thousands of participants walked together with Holocaust survivors along the two mile railway track between Auschwitz and Birkenau, where 1.1 million Jews were murdered.
Shaun was joined by CFI Executive Director James Gurd, during the visit.
He said on Twitter: “As Yom Hashoah comes to an end, we must never forget the 6 million Jewish men, women and children murdered in the Holocaust. Visiting Auschwitz Birkenau today on March of the Living brings to life the real barbarity of this tragedy in a way that no textbook ever could”.
He underlined: “May we never forget the atrocities committed here and elsewhere during the Holocaust”.
Prime Minister Theresa May and Home Secretary Sajid Javid both posted messages of commemoration on Twitter and lit candles in memory of individual Holocaust victims.
On Thursday morning, Israel came to a standstill with a two-minute siren sounding across the country in remembrance of Holocaust victims. Pedestrians stood still, buses stopped on busy streets and cars pulled over on major roads – their drivers standing on the roads with their heads bowed.
Israel’s main commemoration service took place at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin laid wreaths.
According to the Hebrew calendar, Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, seen as the most significant act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust that helped shape Israel’s national psyche, symbolising strength and the struggle for freedom.
