Poland: March of The Living

Led by Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Itzhak Navon, a column of 1,500 Jewish teenagers last week retraced the infamous two-mile route from the Auschwitz to the Birkenau death camps followed by hundreds of thousands of Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust. The youths wore jackets emblazoned with the motto MARCH OF THE LIVING, in triumphant commemoration of what became known in Nazi-era Poland as the March of the Dead.

The three-hour service began six days of events marking the 45th anniversary this week of the Warsaw Uprising, the month-long revolt of the capital's Jewish ghetto against Nazi occupiers. The ceremonies, attended by some 4,000 Jews from around the world, mark the largest commemoration of Jewish suffering during World War II ever permitted in the Soviet bloc. The participation of elected Israeli officials was particularly striking evidence of a growing thaw in relations between Jerusalem and Moscow, which have been largely nonexistent since the Soviet Union broke off diplomatic ties with Israel during the Six- Day War in 1967.