
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 8, 1994                   TAG: 9404080089
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: OSWIECIM, POLAND                                LENGTH: Short

JEWISH YOUTHS MARCH FOR REMEMBRANCE

Six thousand Jewish youths marched at Auschwitz concentration camp Thursday, many carrying wooden signs listing relatives lost in World War II and yellow stickers proclaiming "Never Forget."

The message was clear: keep the memory of the Holocaust alive to ensure such human extermination can never happen again. But many of the participants in the fourth "March for the Living" expressed concern that it might.

"It's definitely still here," Jessica Kirzner, an 18-year-old Detroit native, said of the anti-Semitism the Germans exploited in World War II. "It's very scary at times."

Kirzner was among the 6,000 Jewish young people, ages 16-21, who came to Poland from three dozen countries as part of a two-week program designed to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and tackle the racism that caused it.

The march, held every two years since it began in 1988, travels the two-mile route Jewish prisoners used to make from Auschwitz to the Birkenau death camp.

Some in the crowd pointed to Yugoslavia's civil war, where "ethnic cleansing" has forced many people to leave their homes because of religion or ethnic background, as evidence the Holocaust could happen again.

Poland's chief rabbi, Menahem Joskovich, was in Birkenau in 1944. He said the future is in the hands of the young. "Only they can stop such tragedy," he said. "Only they can ensure the Holocaust never happens again. As we see in Yugoslavia, modern weapons cannot stop it."

by CNB