March of the Living commemorates Auschwitz victims

Thousands of people were expected at the site of the Auschwitz death camp today to remember the victims of the Holocaust with a solemn annual march.

Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister and a Nobel peace laureate, is to lead some 8,000 people, mostly students, in the March of the Living, a two-mile trek from Auschwitz to the larger neighbouring camp at Birkenau, which housed most of the killing complex’s gas chambers.