My family were saved from Nazi death camp ...by Prince Philip’s mum
COURAGEOUS PRINCESS ALICE DEFIED GESTAPO
GENTLY laying flowers and saying a silent prayer at his great-grandmother’s grave was a deeply personal moment on Prince William’s very public tour of the Middle East.
Seeing Princess Alice of Battenberg remembered and respected by a future king was a particularly touching moment for Evy Cohen. For she is the granddaughter of the Jewish widow who the princess hid from Nazi persecution in an incredible act of selfless bravery.
Princess Alice hid Rachel Cohen and two of her five children, Tilde and Michel, in her apartment only yards from the Gestapo headquarters in 1943 in German-occupied Greece.
For 13 months, at great risk to her own life, she kept them sheltered, fed and in touch with the outside world until it was safe enough for them to go.
Princess Alice never spoke of her heroism, but details were unearthed by her family years after her death in 1969. Relatives of the Cohen family hope her story is never forgotten.
Evy, 62, says: “My family would not exist without the courageous act of Princess Alice. As well as saving my grandmother, aunt and uncle, she saved my dad and his two brothers, because they would not have fled Greece unless they’d known the others were safe.
“Princess Alice’s story of incredible courage must keep being told in her memory.”
Prince William made time on his Middle East tour for a private and personal meeting with Evy and her nephew Philippe, 31.
Evy, an artist living in Paris, says: “Meeting Prince William was so emotional I kept losing my words. We met in the Prime Minister’s residency.
“We gave Prince William a photograph showing his great-grandfather Prince Andrew and great-great-grandfather King George I of Greece, and my own grandparents. He was very touched.
“It meant a lot to us to be able to meet to express our family’s sincere gratitude to the royal family. My generation, the past generation and the future generation are, and will eternally be, grateful to his great-grandmother Princess Alice for the great act of bravery, risking her own life to take in a family in need.”
Prince William learned about Princess Alice’s wartime rescue from his grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh, who had a very close relationship with his mother.
The connection between the royal family and Cohens dates back to the reign of King George I, when he would stay in a home belonging to Evy’s greatgrandfather Elias Cohen while visiting the town of Trikala in northern Greece.
Her grandfather Haimaki, also a banker and prominent MP, maintained the relationship with the Palace.
That relationship would save their family’s lives. Born at Windsor Castle
with her grandmother Queen Victoria present, Princess Alice was different even in childhood.
Deaf from the age of eight, she was, some members of her family believed, gifted with special empathy for people.
Alice fell in love with Prince Andrew of Greece at the coronation of her cousin King Edward VII in 1902, and they married in 1903. The youngest of their five children is Prince Philip.
Sadly, her marriage fell apart when Prince Andrew abandoned her to live as a playboy in Paris. Alice suffered a break down and, in 1930, was forcibly removed from her family and treated for schizophrenia in a Swiss mental institution.
On the advice of Sigmund Freud, her womb was blasted with X-rays to “cure her of her sexual desires”.
During this time, her three daughters married German princes, who later fought with the Nazis, but she did not
You can take your troops out of my country, please ALICE WHEN ASKED BY NAZI WHAT HE COULD DO
attend their weddings. Prince Philip, moved to Britain to live with his uncles Louis and George Mountbatten.
Alice later settled alone in Greece, where she worked to help the poor.
She reconnected with Haimaki and, aware of the increasing anti-Semitism in Europe, promised to help the Cohens if ever they needed aid.
They desperately called on that help in 1943, after Haimaki died of an illness.
Evy says: “History has told us that more than 95% of the 60,000 Jews in the city of Salonica were taken to the death camps and immediately gassed.
“My family did not know that then, but, of course, knew they were in great danger. Somehow they contacted Princess Alice and she took them into small apartments and only a handful of trusted people knew they were there. It was an incredibly courageous act.
Rachel’s three eldest sons Elie, Alfred and Jacques escaped on small boats to join the Greek free forces in Egypt.
Evy says: “They left their country only after they knew their mother and sister were safe. They believed Michel was also safe, but it turns out he was not and he was later also taken in by the Princess.”
When the Gestapo became suspicious they hauled Alice in for interrogation. But she pretended not to understand their questions because of her deafness.
During the Nazi occupation of Athens in 1943, some assumed that Alice was pro-German. But when one general asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?”, she replied, “You can take your troops out of my country.”
After the war, Alice founded an order of nursing nuns and moved to a convent on the Greek island of Tinos. In 1967, in failing health, Alice was invited by Prince Philip to live at Buckingham Palace. She died there two years later.
During their last trip to Israel, in 1988, Evy’s parents learned that Princess Alice’s coffin had been transferred from Windsor to Jerusalem as per her wishes.
In 1993, Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the Holocaust honoured Alice with the title “Righteous Among the Nations”, the highest honour bestowed upon nonJews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews.
Evy says: “Princess Alice very much deserves the honour and it was very moving for me to know her great-great grandson appreciates what she did. My family and I will also do everything we can to ensure her story is told so her kindness and courage is never forgotten.”