UN ambassadors from around the world to join March of the Living
Dozens of UN ambassadors from around the world to participate in the March of the Living
By OMRI NAHMIASUN diplomats in the Auschwitz museum in Poland, at the center, Israeli ambassador to the UN Danny Danon 2018(photo credit: Courtesy)
WASHINGTON – Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, will lead a delegation of 30 of his peers from across the world to visit Poland and Israel next week. The diplomats, representing Kenya, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Latvia, and Lithuania, will join him in the “March of the Living” on Holocaust Remembrance Day next Thursday.More than 10,000 Jewish and non-Jewish youth from around the world will participate in the 31st annual International March of the Living to pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust and call for an end to antisemitism.Joining the UN ambassadors will be a delegation of senior American diplomats including US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, as well as the US ambassadors to Germany and Poland.According to the Israeli Mission to the UN, for many of the ambassadors from Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands, Latin America and Eastern Europe, this will be the first time they will be taking part in the annual march. The group will visit the Auschwitz death camp and Krakow’s historic Kazimierz Jewish quarter. After the Holocaust Remembrance Day, the group will fly to Israel for a five-day tour of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.In the capital, they will visit the Old City and its Western Wall, and Yad Vashem. Following a meeting with President Reuven Rivlin, Ambassador Danon will take the group to the Gaza border, where the diplomats are expected to attend a briefing with Senior IDF officers.Ambassador Danon told The Jerusalem Post that “the participation of ambassadors in the March of the Living is proof that we are on the right track to crack the walls of the silence of the international community when it comes to antisemitism.”“We saw last week in Poland an effigy of a doll with Jewish characteristics beaten. In Australia, swastikas were sprayed on a public beach, and in the US, we still see some invoking the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute. We will not allow a reality in which the Jews of the world return to a life lived in fear. This battle is not just battle over the memory of the past, but also about the future of the coming generations.”For more information about March of the Living, please visit here.
