OSWIECIM, Poland: Released Gaza hostages joined Holocaust survivors on Monday for an annual march in southern Poland to commemorate victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
Survivors of the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas also joined the “March of the Living” at the site, which has become a symbol of Nazi Germany’s genocide of European Jews.
“I came to show that we’re alive and that we’ve built a country,” Bella Haim, 86, told AFP.
Her grandson Yotam Haim was captured by Hamas militants on October 7 and later gunned down in Gaza by Israeli soldiers who failed to realize he had escaped from his captors.
“I told myself that I couldn’t remain silent and I’m marching here in the name of my grandson Yotam and the victims” of the attack, Bella said.
She was part of an Israeli delegation that flew to Poland for the march in the southern city of Oswiecim, which numbered around 8,000 people this year.
Every year, Jews and non-Jews from around the world take part in the event at the site of the former death camp, which was built by Nazi Germany after it invaded Poland.
One million European Jews died at the camp between 1940 and 1945 along with around 80,000 non-Jewish Poles, 25,000 Roma and 20,000 Soviet soldiers.
The camp was liberated by the Red Army in January 1945.
This year’s March of the Living was briefly disrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters who spoke out against what they called Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza.
The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli figures.
The militants also took some 250 hostages, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza. The army says 35 of them are dead.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,735 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Ex-Gaza hostages in Auschwitz for March of the Living
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Ex-Gaza hostages in Auschwitz for March of the Living
- One million European Jews died at the camp between 1940 and 1945 along with around 80,000 non-Jewish Poles, 25,000 Roma and 20,000 Soviet soldiers
Syria gunman who killed Americans was to be fired from security forces for ‘extremism’: ministry
DAMASCUS: Syria’s interior ministry said on Sunday that the gunman who killed three Americans in the central Palmyra region the previous day was a member of the security forces who was to have been fired for extremism.
Two US troops and a civilian interpreter died in the attack on Saturday, which the US Central Command said had been carried out by an alleged Daesh group (IS) militant who was then killed.
The Syrian authorities “had decided to fire him” from the security forces before the attack for holding “extremist Islamist ideas” and had planned to do so on Sunday, interior ministry spokesman Noureddine Al-Baba told state television.
A Syrian security official told AFP on Sunday that “11 members of the general security forces were arrested and brought in for questioning after the attack.”
The official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the gunman had belonged to the security forces “for more than 10 months and was posted to several cities before being transferred to Palmyra.”
Palmyra, home to UNESCO-listed ancient ruins, was once controlled by IS during the height of its territorial expansion in Syria.
The incident is the first of its kind reported since Islamist-led forces overthrew longtime Syrian ruler Bashar Assad in December last year, and rekindled the country’s ties with the United States.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the soldiers “were conducting a key leader engagement” in support of counter-terrorism operations when the attack occurred, while US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said the ambush targeted “a joint US-Syrian government patrol.”
US President Donald Trump called the incident “an Daesh attack against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” using another term for the group.
He said the three other US troops injured in the attack were “doing well.”
