I would like to share with you my experience: I attanded again with thousands of people together the 17th March of Living which was held on 14th April 2019 commemorating the victims of Holocaust including Jane Haining, a scottish missionary teacher. The opening speech was held by David Mundell, the UK Secretary of State for Scotland. Lindsay British ambassador to Hungary and Gábor Gordon, the leader of the organisation hosted the event. They emphasized how important today to stand up against antisemitism and discrimination of any kind. It was great to see how many people gathered here at this little square, people everywhere on the grass, on the road and on the pavements.
According to estimation 565,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Many of them were deported to the death camp in Auschwitz, Poland in 1944. There were some brave people who risked their lives to save Jewish people. The honor is given to these, exclusively non-Jews people by Israel's Holocaust remembrance authority, Yad Vashem.
Jane Haining, the Scottish missionary teacher - the only Scot honoured as "Righteous Among the Nations" - refused to give up her Jewish pupils during the Second World War. She taught girls at a boarding school of the Church of Scotland's Mission in Budapest, she was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and later died in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. This lady was remembered at the march this year.
We started our walk to the sound of the shofar and Scottish bagpipes, from Március 15 Square, along the Jane Haining riverbank, to the ‘Shoes on the Danube Bank’ memorial. Ágnes Keleti lit a ‘giant torch’at the end of the walk. She is Holocaust survivor and 5-time Olympic champion of gymnastics. It was really great to see hundreds of torch lights in the dark. These marchers all stand for a peaceful, democratic life of different cultures and against the prejudice and intolerance. Nowadays it is getting more important to attend these kind of events and to communicate towards the world that it can never happen again! Let's march together next year in Budapest!
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