The March of the Living, on of the most important Holocaust commemorative events in the world and one of the flagship events of Holocaust Memorial Day, returned in 2022 to be set in Poland, after two years of absence due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Debby Communications continues to manage the march's communications lineup, as it has for the past seven years. The media purpose was to create quality coverage before and during the march, emphasizing the passing-on of the torch of remembrance from the older generations to the younger ones.
The challenges we faced included a budgetary framework that allowed for the release of a smaller delegation of journalists and for a shorter period; A VIP delegation has not left for Poland; The march included only a few thousand instead of tens of thousands of participants, following the fighting in nearby Ukraine; The collection of personal stories of Holocaust survivors is significantly smaller than in previous years, when instead of the 100 survivors who participate, as every year, only eight marched. Due to that, the work of locating the stories was more focused than ever. New content has been formulated and adapted to the current media discourse and the current agenda, media support for public relations moves by the march organizers and leveraging the relationships created with the participants of the march of the living in the past: press delegations, officials, and opinion leaders.
The March of the Living has garnered wide-ranging media exposure. The small delegation of reporters, composed of all the major media in Israel, covered and broadcast live, before and from the march itself throughout all day. Witnesses, survivors, and teens told their stories and conveyed the annual educational message “Never Means Never”. In total, the 2022 March of the Living received over 140 articles on all platforms, including three articles in the main edition of News 12 and dozens of other television articles on all channels and broadcast hours. The march itself was broadcast live on all news sites in Israel and is positioned as the main event of Holocaust Memorial Day.
