Queen and Duke to visit site of camps at Belsen

THE QUEEN will visit the site of the Bergen-Belsen prisoner of war and concentration camps during a state visit to Germany, it was announced yesterday.

The camps were liberated 70 years ago by British troops and the Queen will be joined by the Duke of Edinburgh during her tour of the site, which is now a memorial to those who died at the hands of the Nazis.

The visit will be staged next month and will be a personal, reflective visit for the monarch with a minimum of ceremony, according to Buckingham Palace.

British troops found thousands of unburied bodies and severely ill prisoners who had been interned at the site in northern Germany when they arrived there on April 15, 1945. One of the reasons the Germans agreed to surrender the camp was due to so many of the inmates suffering from diseases. There was no running water in the camp and there were epidemics of typhus, typhoid and tuberculosis.

Tens of thousands of prisoners from all over Europe were killed at Bergen-Belsen or died following its liberation as a result of their treatment.

Anne Frank and her sister Margot died at the camp not long before it was liberated.

The Royal couple will visit a number of memorials at the site, including one which is dedicated to Frank, who became worldfamous after her death through her diary written while she and her family hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam before their capture. The Queen is expected to lay a wreath at the inscription wall.

During the visit, the monarch will meet small groups of survivors and liberators and representatives of Jewish and Christian communities.

Buckingham Palace confirmed yesterday that the Royal couple’s four-day visit to Germany will begin on June 23 and will involve a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel. They will attend a state banquet that will be held in their honour.

The Queen and the Duke will also visit Frankfurt with Germany’s Federal President Joachim Gauck and his partner, Daniela Schadt.

While in the city, they will tour St Paul’s Church, where they will meet representatives of the local community and hear about the significance of the building as the birthplace of parliamentary democracy in Germany.