Under a steady spring rain, some 20,000 people from around the world filed in a slow stream of humanity along the road to the killing fields of Birkenau Thursday to take part in a ceremony to remember the millions who died in the Holocaust. As a narrator intoned the names of the victims of the most infamous of the Nazi death camps set up on Polish soil, participants in the 18th March of the Living - the biggest in the event's history on the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II - filed past Birkenau's grimly notorious watch tower and into the sprawl of green fields and spartan barracks.
The train track that enters the camp under the watch tower was lined with wooden plaques left by the marchers, inscribed with messages in languages from Hebrew to Spanish, French, German, Latvian and Hungarian.
Two hours after the hollow wail of the traditional Jewish shofar horn had cut through the damp air of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp, signalling the start of the march at 1:15 pm (1115 GMT), hundreds of people wearing the navy blue rain jackets of the event, many carrying Israel's sky blue and white flag with the Star of David, still crowded the road to Birkenau.
There, they took part in a remembrance ceremony where Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon addressed officials and participants, describing the march as "an impressive and inspiring demonstration of solidarity and remembrance".
In Birkenau - the German name for the village of Brzezinka, which the Germans emptied to be able to build an extension to Auschwitz in order to be able to kill Jews and other 'Untermenschen' more efficiently - participants visited the dark, cold barracks that stretch out, row after row, across grassy fields as they waited for everyone to arrive.
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