Holocaust remembrance event goes online due to virus

The March of the Living, an annual event that brings together survivors in Poland to remember the Holocaust, moved online for the first time as coronavirus restrictions prevented it taking place as usual.

Participants usually meet to march at the Auschwitz concentration camp, but rules to prevent the spread of the coronavirus meant that was impossible for Tuesday's commemorations.

Given the age now of some of those held prisoner during World War Two, some may not get the chance to march again.

"I have run the March of the Living more than 32 years," the event's World Chair Shmuel Rosenman said.

"I am not an emotional person but when we made a decision not to march ... I felt I need to cry. I needed to catch myself, because the survivors, many of them, would not be able to come next year."

Instead, some 10,000 people made virtual plaques of remembrance that were projected onto the Birkenau gate at the camp in Poland and also onto the Israeli National Theatre Building in Tel Aviv.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin was the first to lay a virtual plaque.

"As anti-Semitism raises its ugly head once again across the world, the nations of the world must stand together. Together, in the struggle against racism. Together, in the struggle against anti-Semitism and extremism," he said.

More than 3 million of Poland's 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, accounting for about half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust.