Descendents of Nazi SS officers, together with Holocaust survivors and their offsprings, began a week-long march on Monday across Poland and through the sites of former Nazi death camps.

The symbolic march began at Auschwitz, near Krakow, in southern Poland and will end on Friday at Treblinka, 65 miles north-east of the capital Warsaw.

At the opening ceremony, one of the descendents of a Nazi SS officer asked for forgiveness for her grandfather, an electrician who installed the electrified barbed wire fence at Auschwitz-Birkenau and wired the camp’s gas chambers.

Other descendents spoke at the opening ceremony in an effort to try to begin to rectify the unspeakable bitterness that divides the two peoples.

Lia Shemtov, an Israel member of Knesset for Yisrael Beiteinu, together with hundreds of people from Israel, Poland and Germany, will attend the final ceremonies.