By Sara Brown, Advocate staff
Irv Kempner, March of the Living chairman, started attending the March of Living in 2005, after a friend persuaded him to do so.
“I’m the son of two Holocaust survivors and he thought it would be important for me to go on the trip,” Kempner told The Jewish Advocate. “You never really understand the impact of the Holocaust until you visit the sites.”
The trip left such a lasting impression on him that when his friend asked if he would be involved with the teen portion of the march, Kempner didn’t think twice. He has been doing it ever since.
The march takes place on Yom Hashoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day – established in memory of the six million Jews whom the Nazis murdered during World War II. Thousands of Jewish teens from around the world walk three kilometers across Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest concentration camp complex. The marchers walk hand-in-hand in silence, as a tribute to all victims of the Holocaust.
March of the Living is currently taking applications for the 2017 trip. The teen trip runs April 19 to May 3. Participants will visit Nazi concentration camps and former shtetls in Poland, followed by a week in Israel, where they will mark Israel Memorial Day and Israel Independence Day. The Israel portion of the trip includes visits to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Kempner said the experience is sometimes “overwhelming” for teenagers.
“They really come together as a community,” he said. “They really bond. They pray together, they cry together, they do everything together. It’s amazing to see.”
One of the main lessons the teens learn on the trip is what they can do to make sure a genocide such as the Holocaust never happens again.
“You constantly hear, ‘Never again,’” Kempner said. “However, that means three things to us. It means it will never happen again by me, will never happen again with me and will never happen again to me.
“Meaning, I will never do this to another human being, I will never stand by if this happens, and I have Israel to go to so it cannot happen to me. This is what we try to instill in every single kid during the trip,” he added.
Ninety-five percent of participants in past March of the Living “heritage” educational trips say their participation strengthened their Jewish identity and their bond with Israel, according to a recent study of 250 past participants by William Helmreich, Ph.D., a sociology professor at the City University of New York.
Most of the students on the trip are high school seniors, Kempner said.
“We want to develop a more engaged population,” he said. “We want people to know their history and the importance of Israel.”
“We want to prep kids before they go to college knowing the importance of Israel,” Kempner continued, “so they don’t succumb to the BDS movement and things like that.
“We consider ourselves the farm team of Jewish advocacy.”
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