(JNS) March of the Living, the largest annual international experiential Holocaust education program in the world, has taken place in Poland on Holocaust Remembrance Day, also known as Yom Hashoah, without interruption since its inception in 1988.To date, more than 260,000 March of the Living participants have taken the almost two-mile walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau in honor of those who lost their lives in the Holocaust.

This year, however, for the first time in its history, the event was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

And so, as an alternative, March of the Living launched a global Holocaust remembrance project for individuals to pay tribute to Holocaust victims and the fight against antisemitism ahead of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, which began on the eve on April 20.

The March of the Living Virtual Plaque Project, initiated under the slogan “NeverMeansNever,” enables people from around the world to compose a personal message and place it on a virtual plaque to be set against the backdrop of the infamous train tracks at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.

“We were bitterly disappointed to have to postpone this year’s March of the Living. However, we remain utterly determined to ensure that the unparalleled tragedy of the Holocaust remains at the forefront of the world’s conscience. Given the distressing re-cent rise in global antisemitism and today’s need for greater compassion and tolerance, the lessons of the Holocaust are more relevant than ever,” said March of the Living President Phyllis Greenberg Heideman. 

Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin was the first to lay a virtual plaque. In so doing, he included the following message: “Seventy-five years after the Holocaust, the terrible tragedy of our people, as antisemitism raises its ugly head once again across the world, the nations of the world must stand together. Together, in the struggle against racism. Together, in the struggle against antisemitism and extremism. Together, for the protection of democratic values and human dignity. This is the mission of our time. This is our challenge. If we can unite around these things, then we can rise to the challenge.”

Rivlin was followed by former Soviet refusenik and this year’s Genesis Prize winner Natan Sharansky; U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman; Jewish Agency chair-man Isaac Herzog; and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks of the United Kingdom, who write the following message: 

“There are cultures that forget the past. There are cultures that are held captive by the past. Jews do neither. We carry the past with us as we will carry the memory of the Shoah with us for as long as the Jewish people exist. Those fragments of memory help make us who we are. Jews ‘choose life’.”

Main Photo: A view of the March of the Living Virtual Plaque Project. (Source: Screenshot)