OSWIECIN, Poland - The last time Terry Guttman walked into the Birkenau death camp, she was among the few selected to live.

Yesterday, on a rainy and windy day here, the 77-year-old stepped back in joining 18,000 people from around the world on the recreation of a Nazi death march now known as The March of the Living.

The marchers walked three kilometres from Auschwitz to Birkenau, where more than 1.5 million mostly Jewish people were killed.

"I'm very sad but I am happy to be here. I'm alive," Ms. Guttman said.

Chris Lawton, 21, who isn't Jewish, travelled here from Ottawa. He is part of the march, which takes place annually on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

"It's hard to understand the feeling of standing in the same spot where this occurred," the Carleton University student said from the train station in Auschwitz.

"Soon there won't be any first-hand memories. Here I can meet people who experienced this first-hand and I can go home and talk about it."

Under a sea of umbrellas, the marchers representing many nations, including Canada, Australia, the United States, Brazil, Russia and Israel, walked silently along paved roads and through neighbourhoods before coming to the train tracks that led into Birkenau. There, many left messages written on wooden panels.

"As educators we always need to know more and experience more," said Ryan Wood, 20, a student from Regina.

Mr. Wood is travelling through Poland with a group of Canadian teachers who are experiencing and learning about the Holocaust.

Many survivors made the journey, too. They came to pray and to memorialize the family they never had a chance to mourn.

"It's very painful to come back, but it's worth it," said Ernest Ehrmann, 77. Mr. Ehrmann was sent to Birkenau as a 15-year-old and says he still wakes up with nightmares of this place.

"It's my satisfaction and hope that kids will carry the memories with them," he said.

Max Eisen, 75, remembered standing here in fear and smelling what he described as the awful scent of burning flesh. He said it is important to use yesterday's experience as a tool to prevent further atrocities.

"Politicians and leaders need to come here, because 60 years after liberation it can still happen again and we must not look away," he said.

Mr. Eisen cited Rwanda and the Darfur region of Sudan as examples of where his fears are playing out.

At the official ceremony on the grounds of Birkenau, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon addressed the crowd in Hebrew.

"Remember how millions of Jews were transferred to their deaths and the world kept silent," he said. "Take the memory of those people and tell their stories."

Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel also made the trek to Birkenau from the United States. In his speech, he added that Jewish history has not ended but continues to exist.

"In this place a few steps from here, people were pulled to the so-called showers where, in unspeakable agony, they watched each other desperately try to catch a last breath."