Polish, Israeli presidents take part in March of the Living

WARSAW, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Polish President Andrzej Duda and his Israeli counterpart Reuven Rivlin took part in the March of the Living at the site of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in southern Poland on Thursday, Polish Press Agency reported.

Duda, speaking during the main ceremony held at the International Monument to the Victims of Fascism in Birkenau, said: "We have met in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the German death camp, which is a symbol and synonym of the Holocaust for the entire world and the whole of mankind".

"Nazi Germans committed the greatest crime of genocide in history here," the Polish head of state stressed, adding that the suffering experienced there by the Jewish people surpasses human comprehension and imagination.

Rivlin said in his statement that Israel was closely following what was going on in Poland with regard to the commemoration and responsibility concerning historical events.

He stressed that Israel demanded that Poland should be responsible for fully researching the Holocaust. He also considered it very important for Israelis to learn the Jewish history of Poland, and for young and old Poles to learn what happened here during WWII.

The two presidents also lit candles, bowed their heads and pressed their hands on the Death Wall at Auschwitz, the site where inmates, chiefly Polish resistance fighters, were executed by Nazi German forces during World War II.

The March of the Living, takes place annually along a three-kilometre route from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp complex built during World War II.

This year's march is attended by around 12,000 people. The first march was held in 1988.

The Germans established the Auschwitz camp in 1940, initially for the imprisonment of Poles. Auschwitz II-Birkenau was established two years later. At least 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz, most of whom were Jews.

The camp was liberated on Jan. 27, 1945. In 1947, the camp site was declared a national memorial site. Enditem