Yesterday, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Prince William, the heir apparent to the British throne, talked to a Holocaust survivor about passing the memory of its horrors down to the younger generation — specifically to his eldest son, Prince George, who is 11 years old.
“George is getting to the age where he’s starting to understand things. So, it’s getting interesting to talk to him about what happened,” the Prince of Wales told Alfred Garwood, a survivor of Bergen Belsen. At the event, which took place in Guildhall in London, the prince, 42, also spoke of his family’s personal connection to the Holocaust.
“I was recently reminded of my great-grandmother, who lived in Athens during the Second World War,” he said, sharing details of her work from a book titled “Holocaust Heroes” about Princess Alice of Battenberg, the mother of his grandfather Phillip and mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II. According to the book, Alice “worked tirelessly for the Red Cross, helping to organize soup kitchens, opening shelters for orphaned children and setting up a nursing system for poor areas of the city” in the embattled Athens, but she also gave shelter to a Jewish widow, Rachel Cohen, and two of her five children, and helped the Cohen family survive the war. It was a risky undertaking, with the next-door home of the Archbishop having a German soldier stationed at the door. She told the staff at her house that Rachel was a former governess to her children and when interrogated by the Gestapo on multiple occasions, she used her deafness to act like she couldn’t understand what was being asked.
Prince William and Princess Kate lit memorial candles to honor those who died in the Holocaust and in other genocides. At the event, Kate also got to reunite with Steven Frank and Yvonne Bernstein, a German Jewish survivor, who she photographed for International Holocaust Remembrance Day back in 2020 with their grandchildren. Frank was one of only 93 out of 15,000 children sent to Theresienstadt Ghetto who have survived the Holocaust. Bernstein survived the war because her aunt and uncle took her into their home in Paris. Her uncle was eventually discovered and murdered in Auschwitz. The Princess photographed them with mementos they had from the war.
“Despite unbelievable trauma at the start of their lives, Yvonne Bernstein and Steven Frank are two of the most life-affirming people that I have had the privilege to meet,” she said back then. “They look back on their experiences with sadness but also with gratitude that they were some of the lucky few to make it through. Their stories will stay with me forever.” Kate and Yvonne were thrilled to reunite at the event this week, hugging each other and chatting.
In his speech, Prince William honored “those survivors who have lived with scars, both mental and physical. Their bravery, in sharing with us the most harrowing moments of their lives, are extremely powerful and ensures that we never forget. I assure them we never will.”
This Holocaust Remembrance Day marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. King Charles III traveled to the site of the death camp and spoke very clearly about the importance of remembering the Holocaust and fighting antisemitism.
The monarch spoke about how being in Poland on that day was both a somber and a sacred thing: “It is a moment when we recall the 6 million Jews, old and young, who were systematically murdered, together with Sinti, Roma, disabled people, members of the LGBT community, political prisoners and so many others upon whom the Nazis inflicted their violence and hatred,” he said. It’s a day, he went on, when “we recall the depths to which humanity can sink when evil is allowed to flourish, ignored for too long by the world.” He spoke about Lily Ebert, the British Holocaust survivor who passed away this past October at age 100, and who, along with other survivors, “taught us to cherish our freedom, to challenge prejudice and never to be a bystander in the face of violence and hate,” a message that he said feels especially vital with the “dangerous re-emergence of antisemitism” today.
“As the number of Holocaust survivors regrettably diminishes with the passage of time, the responsibility of remembrance rests far heavier on our shoulders,” he continued, “and on those of generations yet unborn. The act of remembering the evils of the past remains a vital task and in so doing, we inform our present and shape our future.”
And now, his own son and daughter-in-law are passing that legacy of remembrance to their children.
