Prince tells of grandmother’s heroism
AUSTRIA: The Prince of Wales has told of his pride at his ‘‘amazing’’ grandmother, who saved the lives of a Jewish family by sheltering them from the Nazis during World War II.
The prince, who first visited his paternal grandmother’s grave in Israel last year, told how he took flowers from his garden in Birkhall, Aberdeenshire, for the deeply moving visit.
He and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, spent the morning with Holocaust survivors at the Jewish Museum in Vienna during the final leg of their nine-day tour of Europe.
They included Auschwitz survivors Freddie Knoller, 95, and Gerda Frei, 80, and Harry Bibring, 91, who escaped on the Kindertransport after his family shop was destroyed in Kristallnacht.
After asking for their stories over a cup of tea, the Prince told the group: ‘‘My father’s mother took in a Jewish family during the war and hid them.
‘‘She was amazing, my grandmother. She took them in during the Nazi occupation. She never told anybody, she didn’t tell her family for many years.
‘‘She’s buried in Jerusalem. In September last year I went to the funeral of President [Shimon] Peres and finally got to see her grave.’’
Princess Alice of Battenberg, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and mother of the Duke of Edinburgh, lived opposite the Gestapo headquarters in Athens.
In September 1943, she agreed to take in the widow and two of the five children of Haimaki Cohen, who had helped the Greek royal family to shelter from flooding decades before, a moral debt which the royals wanted one day to repay. She hid Rachel Cohen and children Michel and Tilde in her palace until the Nazis withdrew in October 1944, refusing to give them away when threatened with having her home searched.
During that time, the Nazis sent the vast majority of Greece’s Jewish community to concentration camps.
Princess Alice was later recognised by the country’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial as Righteous Among the Nations, and was posthumously awarded Britain’s Hero of the Holocaust medal.
Frei said afterwards: ‘‘It is wonderful that the Prince and Duchess came here.’’ She said Charles told her he had laid flowers from his own garden at Birkhall at his grandmother’s grave.
Princess Alice’s remains are buried at the church of St Mary Magdalene, above the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives.
Originally buried at Windsor Castle, she was reinterred in Jerusalem in 1988, but it was not until 1994 that the Duke of Edinburgh visited his mother’s grave when he travelled to Israel for a ceremony honouring her role in the war years.
Charles and Camilla spent their final afternoon in Vienna with a wine- tasting, a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by the Vienna Philharmonic and a visit by the Duchess to the spectacular Spanish Riding School.
Camilla also showed off her knowledge of fine wines at Weinbau Buschenschank Obermann vineyard, while the Prince admitted he struggles to keep up with the language of wine tasters. The Duchess said her Zweigelt Thorsaulen 2014 red wine had a ‘‘slight peppery taste’’.
Laughing, the Prince said: ‘‘I always find it so difficult, the words you experts use to describe - all these adjectives.’’
After they were given a selection of newly grown vines to take home, Charles wondered if the soil in Britain would be good enough, but the Duchess assured him the chalky soil in the south of England would suit them well.
‘‘I bow to your knowledge of these things,’’ the Prince said. ‘‘My wife is a great red wine enthusiast.’’
Later, the Prince undertook a round-table discussion on tackling modern slavery, human trafficking and discrimination.
The royal couple concluded their European tour, widely believed to be a charm offensive in the wake of the Brexit vote, at a reception with the British ambassador before flying home on an RAF plane. - Telegraph Group