Holocaust victims honoured by Wills and Israeli leader
PRINCE William today met Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu after laying a wreath to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.
The meeting came on the second day of his historic visit to the Middle East, the first to Israel and the Palestinian Territories by a member of the British royal family,
The Duke of Cambridge met Mr Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, at the Israeli leader’s Jerusalem residence against the backdrop of the British and Israeli flags. The visit is seen as hugely significant for UK-Israel relations and comes amid a period of increased tension in the region.
Neither William nor Mr Netanyahu made any comment to reporters.
The prince is also due to meet Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah in the West Bank.
Earlier, William was taken on a guided tour of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem. It recounts the history of the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War.
William learned about the individual stories of victims through their posses- sions, other artefacts and moving testimonies. He also met two survivors who escaped Nazi Germany for the safety of Britain. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis joined William and was part of the ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance, where the duke laid the wreath.
In the Hall of Names, the identities and personal details of millions of victims have been recorded on Pages of Testimony — symbolic tombstones.
The memorial recognises William’s great-grandmother Princess Alice as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” for her role in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust.
She hid three members of the Cohen family in her palace in Athens during the Nazi occupation of Greece. The family survived and today lives in France. In a private 1994 visit to Yad Vashem the Duke of Edinburgh planted a tree there in his mother’s honour.
Today William was heading to the city of Jaffa to meet young people involved in two organisations promoting coexistence between youths of different religious and ethnic communities through football.
Tonight he is due to give a speech at a reception at the residence of Britain’s Ambassador to Israel, David Quarrey, before returning to Jerusalem.