March of Remembrance and Hope

The March of Remembrance and Hope (MRH) is an international Holocaust education program for university and college students from diverse religious, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. Founded in 2001 by Dr. David Machlis of the United States and Eli Rubenstein and Carla Wittes of Canada, the program focuses on teaching the history of the Holocaust and other genocides through experiential learning in Germany and Poland. The program is intended to foster awareness of intolerance and discrimination while encouraging dialogue among students from different communities.^[1][2]

History and Founding

MRH was established in 2001 by Dr. David Machlis and Eli Rubenstein (both of whom worked with March of the Living), and Carla Wittes. Their goal was to adapt aspects of that model, with a focus on survivor testimony and on-site historical education into a program aimed at university students of varied backgrounds. The first MRH program was held in March 2001 with 400 participants representing twenty countries. In 2003 and 2006, approximately 400 students from the US, Canada, Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, Rwanda, South Africa and China again took part in the program..^[3]

The program was run internationally from 2001 to 2006, and then in Canada from 2007 until 2023. The Covid 19 pandemic resulted in the program’s cancellation from 2020 to 2022. The last program took place in 2023.

From 2007 to 2011, the program was operated annually in Canada for Canadian university students by the Canadian Centre for Diversity, in cooperation with partner organizations. In 2013, the Canadian Centre for Diversity transferred responsibility for the program to March of the Living Canada. The Canadian program is primarily funded by the Azrieli Foundation, a philanthropic organization founded by Holocaust survivor David Azrieli, which supports a range of initiatives, including Holocaust education and commemoration. ^[4][5]

While the international MRH program ended in 2006, American institutions such as Nazareth College and Hobart and William Smith Colleges have since participated with the Canadian delegation. An Austrian program with the same name also operates independently, traveling to Poland earlier in the year during the March of the Living. In 2010, Nazareth College and Hobart and William Smith Colleges launched a related initiative titled The March: Bearing Witness to Hope.^[6]

Program Structure

Further information: The Holocaust in Poland and Righteous Among the Nations

In its early years, the MRH program started with a full-day orientation in the New York area for North American participants before they travelled to Poland. The itinerary included visits to major Holocaust-related sites, such as former Jewish cultural centres in Warsaw, Kraków, and Lublin, as well as the extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Majdanek.  The Canadian MRH program added a 2 day visit to Berlin (including the site of the Wannsee Conference) at the start of the overseas trip.

Participants learn about the historical impact of these places and confront the consequences of hatred, indifference, and genocide. A key element of the program is the presence of Holocaust survivors, who accompany the group, share their testimonies, and provide context for what is being witnessed. Throughout the journey, students are encouraged to reflect on their experiences, engage in open discussion, and the goal of building meaningful connections across diverse backgrounds, fostering mutual understanding and highlighting the human capacity for resilience and reconciliation.

The itinerary typically includes meetings with Holocaust survivors before and during the trip, along with individuals recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, who discuss rescue efforts during Nazi rule. The importance of students meeting individuals recognized as Righteous Among the Nations reinforces ethical lessons of moral courage, altruism, and resistance to tyranny.

While similar to the March of the Living in some respects, the March of Remembrance and Hope is a distinct program in many important ways. The March of the Living brings high school students, the majority Jewish,  to Auschwitz -Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day, to march in memory of all victims of Nazi genocide and against prejudice, intolerance, and hate. Some groups travel to Israel after their experience in Poland.

The March of Remembrance and Hope takes place later in the year, is aimed at university students, and is not tied to Holocaust Remembrance Day or an international March. As noted in the book Witness (Page 4): “The March of Remembrance and Hope is aimed at university students of all religions and backgrounds. Its purpose is to teach about the dangers of intolerance through the study of the Holocaust and other WWII genocides. The trip includes a short visit to Germany, followed by a longer visit to Poland, including many of the same sites as March of the Living. On both programs, Holocaust survivors share the memory of their wartime experiences with the young people in the very places where they unfolded."^[7]

Educational Objectives

Credit: Yossi Zeliger

The program is designed to teach students from various religious and ethnic backgrounds about the historical events of the Holocaust and other genocides during WWII, along with the dangers of racism, antisemitism, hate, and intolerance, and to open a dialogue discussing the importance of intercultural understanding and promoting better relations among people. The trip itself is meant to be inclusive, open to Jews and non-Jews, exposing students to the stories of Holocaust survivors in the places their experience unfolded. Students have the opportunity to speak with survivors throughout the trip, ask questions, and listen to their experiences during WWII and the Holocaust. Students spend a few months preparing for the trip by studying various educational materials related to the itinerary. ^{[8][9][4][10][11]}

Credit: Laina Brown

Students from a wide range of religious, ethnic, and cultural communities have participated in MRH, including Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and Seventh-day Adventist students. Participants have also included individuals from communities with their own histories of persecution, such as survivors of the Rwandan genocide, First Nations students, and African American students.^[12]

Upon completion of the trip, students are encouraged to be take part in active efforts using their learned knowledge of the effects of antisemitism, hate speech throughout history, confront Holocaust denial and intolerance to help educate their community of peers and get involved on campus with initiatives promoting hope. ^[13]

An important element of the program has been for students to reflect on their own personal family backgrounds of persecution and discrimination and examine parallels and distinctions with the Holocaust. Students with their own history of genocide or persecution, such as First Nations students or survivors of the Rwandan and Darfur genocides, have listened to the stories of survivors and drawn comfort from their resilience and courage.

On January 27, 2007, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Marie Mirlande Noel, an African American student at the College of St. Elizabeth, and a graduate of the MRH program, addressed the United Nations about her experience on the March of Remembrance and Hope program. During her speech, she challenged her audience to be a beacon of change: “I challenge you, as I challenge myself, to be a beacon of change and to dare to question any inhumane treatment of others. I know that we cannot take care of all the world’s injustices, but I urge you to at least identify one step that you can take toward making a positive difference, however small. This is how change begins.” ^{[14] [15][7]}

Goals of the March of Remembrance and Hope

The program’s goals gravitate around confronting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, affirming the equal dignity of every human being, and learning from both the courage of Holocaust survivors and the moral example of the Righteous Among the Nations. Participants are encouraged to remember the victims, honour survivors and WWII liberators, and appreciate the diverse backgrounds of those taking part. The goals also emphasize personal responsibility: fostering a commitment to justice, tolerance, and community engagement. Ultimately, by visiting the historical sites in Poland, participants symbolically enter history itself, ensuring that the memory of the millions murdered in the Holocaust and World War II remains preserved and never forgotten..^[16]

Holocaust Survivors Who Participated in MRH

Elly Gotz at Memorial for Murdered Jews, Police School of Torture, Rabka, Poland, with Carla Wittes, Director, March of Remembrance and Hope. Credit: Natasha Hossack

Holocaust Survivors who took part in the MRH program include Joseph Gottdenker, Elly Gotz, Sylvia Gutman, Pinchas Gutter, Faigie Libman, Sally Wasserman, and Gershon Willinger.^[7][17]

MRH Films

7 Days of Remembrance and Hope (2009) aired on CBC’s documentary channel and followed the journey of 60 Canadian university students of diverse backgrounds on the 2009 March of Remembrance and Hope. The film, directed by Fern Levitt, won Best Documentary at the Chicago International Film Festival.^[18]

• Pinchas Gutter speaks at MRH 2007^[19]
• Testimony of Survivor Sally Wasserman at Auschwitz Birkenau - MRH 2008^[20]
• 2013 March of Remembrance and Hope^[21]
• Hope is Found in Those Willing to Listen (2016)^[22]
• Healing the World - March of Remembrance and Hope 2018^[23]
• March of Remembrance and Hope 2019: Seeing The Beauty In The Darkness^[24]

Quotes from MRH

The following quotes were expressed by participants in the March of Remembrance and Hope and appear in WITNESS: Passing the Torch of Holocaust Memory to New Generations.^[7]

Be careful who you believe. Be careful who you follow. If you think that one politician suddenly has all the answers to all the questions in the world, be careful. Listen to someone else, because you are being hypnotized. That’s the message.

— Elly Gotz, Holocaust survivor and educator

We had a person named Moses on our trip, a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda. It was incredible how he bonded with me, by my being able to tell my stories. He wrote a letter about how it’s much easier for him to accept, to live in the future, because I have given him another Weltanschauung, another worldview. It’s very important for Holocaust survivors – or anybody else – to spread togetherness and goodwill, and I think it’s the young people specifically who can create this. Because drop by drop by drop, like water on a stone, the world can become a better place.

— Pinchas Gutter, Holocaust survivor and educator

When a survivor of the Holocaust holds hands with a Rwandan student in Auschwitz, and when they dry each other’s tears and learn from one another, we know that Hitler and tyrants like him can be defeated.

— Juliet Karugahe, Survivor of the Rwandan Genocide