Royal couple moved by visit to Nazi concentration camp

William and Kate take a private tour of death camp’s crematorium

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have described their visit to a Nazi concentration camp as “shattering”.

William and Kate heard about the horrors of Stutthof camp in Poland from survivors and took a private tour of the crematorium.

The couple saw other evidence of the Nazi attempts to exterminate the Jews, from a display of hundreds of pairs of shoes from Holocaust victims to the wooden huts where prisoners slept three to a bunk.

The couple wrote in the visitors’ book: “This shattering visit has reminded us of the horrendous murder of six million Jews, drawn from across the whole of Europe, who died in the abominable Holocaust.

“It is, too, a terrible reminder of the cost of war, and the fact that Poland alone lost millions of its people, who were the victims of a most brutal occupation.

“All of us have an overwhelming responsibility to make sure that we learn the lessons and that the horror of what happened is never forgotten and never repeated.”

Survivors of the concentration camp, Manfred Goldberg and Zigi Shipper, both 87, from London, made a special trip to the Stutthof camp – the first time they had returned to the site – to meet William and Kate and recount their experiences.

Mr Goldberg, who spent two phases of the war at the camp, said: “When I was here they found that the gas chamber was too small for their purposes – they couldn’t gas people fast enough.

“They brought in two goods wagons on a railway line running at the back of the camp.

“They got engineers to make them airtight and they used those as auxiliary gas chambers so they could kill people faster.

“Then they had the second problem because the crematorium couldn’t burn the bodies fast enough, so periodically bodies were being piled up.

“A row of bodies, a row of timber, a row of bodies, a row of timber, until it was a sizeable pile and they would set fire to it and try to dispose of the bodies, in addition to the crematorium working 24 hours a day.”

He added: “I was feeling extremely nervous, I agonised before I agreed to come here, because I felt I’d put it all behind me.”

He continued: “In 1946, when I was a youngster, I was admitted to Britain.

“I didn’t dream I would ever have the privilege of shaking the hand of a future king of this country.”

Pictures: PA. The duchess with Manfred Goldberg and the duke with Zigi Shipper.

Top: Crowds welcome the royal couple to Gdansk. Above: William and Kate are presented with gifts during their visit to Poland.