Holocaust survivor Irene Shashar (R) speaks to rescued hostage Ori Magdish (L), while Holocaust survivor Gita Kaufman and released hostage Agam Berger embrace, draped in an Israeli flag outside the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign at Auschwitz during March of the Living on April 24, 2025 in Oswiecim, Poland. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

(JTA) — OŚWIĘCIM, Poland — At Auschwitz for the annual March of the Living, Maggie Megidish and her daughter, released hostage Ori, stood among a delegation of survivors of both the Holocaust and Oct. 7. The visit stirred memories of their own ordeal.

When a Holocaust survivor spoke of the hunger she endured in the camp, Maggie said was transported back to the weeks she barely ate, tormented by thoughts of her daughter in captivity.

“With every bite, or every sip of water, I wondered if she, too, was getting any food,” she recalled.

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Eighty Holocaust survivors were set to take part in this year’s March of the Living, some for the first time, marking 80 years since the liberation of the concentration camps. But on Wednesday evening, just hours before she was meant to depart for Auschwitz, 94-year-old survivor, Eve Kugler, died in her London home, bringing the number down to 79.

That same evening, before news of her death became public, a video featuring Kugler was broadcast at the March’s opening ceremony.

March of the Living president Phyllis Greenberg Heideman reflected on the weight of this year’s delegation, saying, “It will probably be their last time in this godforsaken place, Auschwitz-Birkenau.”

Draped in Israeli flags by the infamous Auschwitz gate bearing the words “Work will set you free,” Ori Megidish and fellow IDF observer Agam Berger, who were both abducted by Hamas and later freed — the first in a rescue operation within weeks and the second in a hostage deal after nearly 16 months — stood for several minutes embracing Holocaust survivors Irene Shashar and Gita Kaufman.

“We beat the enemy, didn’t we, girls?” Shashar said through tears. “We went through horrors, but despite everything, we are here, standing firm in the face of such evil.”

Ten freed hostages were set to participate in the annual march, which brings Jewish teens from around the world to Auschwitz. In addition to Megidish and Berger, the attendees included the American-Israeli hostage Keith Siegel freed during the recent ceasefire and Eli Sharabi, whose wife and daughters were murdered on Oct. 7 and drew comparisons to a Holocaust survivor when he was freed in February because of his gaunt appearance.

Outside the crematoria, Sharabi said the presence of survivors of the Hamas-led massacre at Auschwitz was a “reminder that the Jewish people will exist for eternity.”

Tzili Wenkert, grandmother of released hostage Omer Wenkert, said that despite being a Holocaust survivor, “my real Holocaust was when they kidnapped Omer.”

“When I came to Israel in 1965, I never thought I’d go through another Holocaust. I never dreamed something like this could happen,” Wenkert said.

Michael Kuperstein went further, describing the abduction of his grandson Bar — still held by Hamas — as “even worse” than the trauma he experienced as a child under Nazi persecution.

“The hate we saw with the Nazis was the same hate we saw on Oct 7. It’s a second Holocaust.” he said.

Bar had moved in with his grandparents after his father fell ill, to make space for a caregiver. His grandparents have kept his room untouched and leave an empty chair for him at every meal. Two months before his abduction from the Nova music festival, Bar, a paramedic, saved his grandfather’s life by performing emergency treatment during a heart attack.

Standing alongside her husband outside the crematoria, Michael’s wife, Faina Kuperstein, said her grandson is going through “nearly the same thing that Holocaust survivors went through.”

Shoshana Bogler, 91, had never set foot in Auschwitz until now. A Holocaust survivor originally from Łomża near Białystok in Poland, she was deported to Siberia during the war with her four siblings, only one of whom survived. She said she hesitated to join the March of the Living, nervous about facing the site where her husband’s entire family was murdered.

“But I also felt I needed to see it for myself. I wanted to see that gate,” she said, gesturing toward the iron “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign. Her daughter had tried to dissuade her, warning that the experience might be too emotionally overwhelming.

For decades, Bogler openly shared her late husband Shmuel’s story, but never her own. “I’m so, so happy I came,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “It’s like a huge stone off my chest – a closing of the circle. I have never told my story, and now I feel ready.”

Bogler, who lives in Jerusalem, also said the comparisons between Oct. 7 and the Holocaust are valid. “I couldn’t sleep for days after Oct. 7,” she said. “Of course we can compare the brutality of Hamas to the brutality of the Nazis at Auschwitz. People were beheaded!”

Fran Malkin, 87, who now lives in New Jersey and survived the war hidden for two years by a Polish woman, agreed. Malkin was born in Sokal, then part of Poland, where much of her family was murdered in Bełżec.

“I agree with the comparison,” she said. “The numbers weren’t the same, but I feel very strongly that if they hadn’t been stopped, the numbers would be the same.”

Sara Weinstein, however, pushed back against the comparisons. “There are no words to describe Oct. 7. But it was in our country,” the nonagenarian said. “The victims received treatment — yes, it wasn’t immediate — but they were taken to hospitals, given a bed and a blanket. I lay on the forest floor, wounded and burning with fever, with only leaves for cover, in minus 25 degrees. For three years, I wore the same dress.”

Born in the town of Stepan — then Poland, now Ukraine — Weinstein spent nearly two years in a ghetto. When she was almost 7, Nazis stormed her home and killed her mother, who was shielding her with her body. Weinstein was wounded in the shoulder and back, and the house was set on fire. “My father shouted, ‘If you’re alive, get up and let’s run!’” she recalled.

They hid in forests until the Red Army liberated the area in 1944. Her father was murdered by local Ukrainians. She and her two surviving sisters were sent to an orphanage, and later, before her 10th birthday, to Italy. In 1947, Weinstein immigrated to Palestine.

At the March of the Living’s closing ceremony at Birkenau, Weinstein sang the Yiddish folk song “Oyfn Pripetshik” alongside IDF cantor Shai Abramson. Earlier, bereaved Kibbutz Be’eri survivor Daniel Weiss performed with Agam Berger, who played a 150-year-old violin rescued during the Holocaust. For the first time in the march’s 37-year history, the ceremony was cut short and speeches were canceled due to torrential rain.

Jonny Daniels, founder of Holocaust education nonprofit From the Depths, and a former Poland resident who has long accompanied Holocaust survivors to sites like Auschwitz, warned that comparisons between the Holocaust and Oct. 7 risk minimizing both events.

The former hostages and their families “have earned the right to say whatever they want,” Daniels said, “and none of us are in any kind of position to argue with that.”

But the Holocaust, he argued, was “an entirely unique event that ended in the mass murder of 6 million.” The Hamas attack, by contrast, was “a pogrom, a murder of Jews, but it wasn’t longer than a day,” he said. “It was the 7th of October and not the 8th, or the 9th or the 10th, because today, we have Israel.”

“We have to put each of these events in the separate places that they deserve historically.”

Sara Weinstein said healing after Oct. 7 is possible — but it has to come from within. For 60 years, she couldn’t bring herself to say the words “mom” or “dad.” That changed only after three years of therapy.

“I got stronger, mentally. But it was up to me entirely,” she said. “No one should try to force the Oct. 7 survivors to make a mental change. They need to want it themselves.”

Bella Eizenman, 98, from Łódź, who survived Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and a death march as a teenager, offered her own advice to those struggling. “Don’t give up. Wait for a better day, because it will come,” she said. “Today, being here with my great-grandchildren, I’m proof of that. I beat Hitler.”

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