Gyvybės Žygis – The March of Life Lithuania

“As a teacher, for all these years I have taught my students the wrong thing, and I didn’t even know it! The dimension of this mass murder has never been presented.” This was the comment of a participant of the March of Life in Lithuania after she had realized the historical facts at a memorial event.

From September 22–25, 2011 the March of Life took place in six different cities all across Lithuania. A team of about 30 German participants had come together with friends from the US, Belarus, and Latin America to break the veil of silence concerning the Holocaust, to ask forgiveness, and to set a clear mark against anti-Semitism. All in all, about 600 people took part in the various public events.

The Lithuanian government had declared the March of Life in Kaunas on September 23 their official program for Holocaust Memorial Day. There and in further events in Vilnius, Panevezys, Plunge, Klaipeda, and Mariampole, German and Lithuanian representatives of different Christian denominations came together with Holocaust survivors and Jewish communities. Descendants of German and Lithuanian mass murderers publicly confessed this guilt and asked forgiveness of the descendants of the victims. Many Lithuanian newspapers, internet portals, and TV stations reported on the events, and so the message of the March of Life spread across the entire country.

See pictures of the March of Life in Lithuania on our facebook page.