Be achieved, says William
Prince’s horror at Holocaust
THE Duke of Cambridge expressed his horror yesterday at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial when he paid his respects to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
Clearly deeply disturbed by exhibits showing the Nazi factories of death, he told two survivors who fled to Britain: “There is a lot to take in. It’s not easy.”
He looked pained when shown the shoes, buried beneath a glass floor, of Jews who perished at the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin in German-occupied Poland.
“That’s terrifying. Trying to comprehend the scale and the numbers is terrible,” he said. William, 36, spent an hour-and-a-half touring the memorial and museum.
Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, presented him with a kippah skull cap.
William also met Kindertransport survivors Henry Foner, 86, and Paul Alexander, 80, among 10,000 unaccompanied children who escaped from Germany to Britain in the nine months before the war.
The two men, who moved to Israel in later life, said it had been their chance to thank Britain for taking them. Mr Foner said: “It was such a marvellous experience. It was a chance to say thank you to Great Britain for saving my life.”
At a ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance, William, rekindled the eternal flame and laid a wreath on the ashes of Holocaust victims.
William said: “It’s very moving.”
Rabbi Mirvis said: “He just couldn’t get his head around the enormity of that crime of the Holocaust.”