‘It was good to be alive there’

Draped in Israeli flags with yellow ribbons, Mark Spigelman and his family – his wife, son, daughter-in-law and three granddaughters – marched towards those awful gates and as they entered under the sign “Arbeit macht frei” they yelled “Am Yisrael Chai”.

Eighty years since the liberation of Auschwitz, Spigelman and his family partook in March of the Living last month.

“It was very emotional because where we marched was the same place where possibly over 100 members of my family perished, and the same with my wife Rachel’s family,” said Spigelman.

“Thanks to our survival there were a further two generations marching with us, which is incredible. So all in all, in a place where there should be sadness, we felt empowered.”

Rachel was born after the war to two Holocaust survivors and a few years ago wrote a book about the story of her husband’s survival. Blue Eyes Wide Open describes how Spigelman, born in 1940 in Poland with fair skin and blue eyes, was dressed as a girl by his parents to save him because boys were often checked for circumcisions to prove they were Jewish.