King Charles pledges to remember Holocaust evils during emotional Auschwitz visit

King Charles made a solemn promise that “evils of the past” will never be forgotten as he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Holocaust survivors.

On a day the world stopped to honour six million Jews slaughtered during the Second World War he said remembering ​the pain of humanity’s darkest period was more important than ever.

During a pilgrimage to Poland on Holocaust Memorial Day he said: “As the number of Holocaust survivors regrettably diminishes with the passage of time, the responsibility of remembrance rests far heavier on our shoulders, and on those of generations yet unborn. The act of remembering the evils of the past remains a vital task and in so doing, we inform our present and shape our future.”

​The powerful words came as Charles, 76, patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust,​ wiped tears as he ​h​eard harrowing testimonies from Auschwitz survivors on the 80th anniversary of its liberation on what was the first visit by a British head of state to the death camp.

His participation in ​a​n emotionally-charged commemoration service, staged on the very railway tracks where captives were ferried to their deaths, was the culmination of decades of work with ​Holocaust survivors and the Jewish community​ he passionately champions.

Wearing a dark suit and tie, Charles ​listened attentively as survivors recount​ed stories of unimaginable acts of brutality, but also hope, at the very spot where humanity’s most depraved acts took place.

It was an unprecedented show of strength and support at a time antisemitism is on the rise.

He said: “It is a moment when we recall the depths to which humanity can sink when evil is allowed to flourish, ignored for too long by the world.

“And it is a moment when we recall the powerful testimonies of survivors such as [Auschwitz inmate] Lily Ebert, who so sadly passed away in October, and who collectively taught us to cherish our freedom, to challenge prejudice and never to be a bystander in the face of violence and hate.”

The 90-minute commemoration service saw survivors, some wearing the same striped prison headdress they were ​f​orced to wear by their Nazi captors, recall unspeakable acts​ during their times as prisoners.

It is likely to be one of the last ​t​imes ​those who survived the horrors of Auschwitz are able to attend​ such a service.

Polish-born Auschwitz survivor Tova Friedman, 86, was just six when Auschwitz was liberated on January 27, 1945 and the date has been indelibly etched in her mind since.

She told the service: “I celebrate it every single year, for my whole life since I was a little girl I thought of that day as my birthday. Some of my friends don’t even know that I have a regular birthday because this is what counts.”

She added: “As I was being beaten mercilessly by a guard for fidgeting for not being able to stand still for hours I looked into my mother’s eyes. She was pleading with me ‘don’t cry’.

“And I didn’t. At five I had the rebellion in me that I would not let them know the pain they are inflicting on me.

“After all the children were gone and the courtyard was empty, I thought to myself, ‘am I the only Jewish child left in the world?’ From my town only four children survived.”

Later, Charles viewed the haunting collection of personal effects confiscated from prisoners at the concentration camp before laying a wreath at the Death Wall, the site where thousands – mainly Polish political prisoners – were executed.

Today the Auschwitz, near Oświęcim in what was occupied Poland, stands as a sacred site and monument to guard the memories of those who were slaughtered at the hands of the Nazis and to keep survivors’ stories alive.

Among those attending the globally-televised event were Polish President Andrzej Duda, First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Ukrainian President , French President Emmanuel Macron, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Queen Mathilde of Belgium, and King Frederik X of Denmark.

Survivors, some wearing the striped prison uniforms handed to them by their Nazi captors, sat side-by-side at the bricked entrance to the camp where 1.1 million were slaughtered until it was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1945.

Among those to attend the ceremony was Holocaust survivor and former Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoner, Stanislaw Zalewski, aged 95, who described the camp as a “hell that cannot leave a person”. He was just 18 when he was arrested for underground activities and became a political prisoner. He painted Polish resistance symbols on walls. He has said previously that he returns to the “gates of hell” to teach the world the lessons of Auschwitz.

Leon Weintraub, 99, who saw his mother, sister, and aunt murdered in the gas chambers, said: “We were stripped of all our humanity. First, we were stripped naked and robbed of all our belongings. Then they shaved all our hair, quite often with painful skin removal.

“We the survivors, we understand that the consequence of being considered different is active persecution, the effects of which we have personally experienced.”

The only British Holocaust survivor at the service was Mala Tribich, 94, whose parents Sara and Moishe, sister Lucia, and most of her extended family, were murdered. She received an MBE from Charles’s mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II in 2012, for services to Holocaust education.

The King’s historic day of remembrance started with a visit to the Jewish Community Centre in Krakow he opened in 2008, describing commemorations to honour those who perished as part of a state-sponsored killing machine as a “sombre and sacred moment”.

He was greeted by large crowds, among them several hundred Jews who had waited hours for his arrival, who described his appearance as “symbolic and heart-warming” on the darkest of days.

Charles, who made the visit to Poland alone, has personally commissioned portraits of British Holocaust servers for the Royal Collection Trust.

His visit to Auschwitz was particularly poignant as his late mother did not see the death camp during a 1996 tour to Poland, instead laying a wreath-laying at Umschlagplatz, Warsaw, where more than 200,000 Jews were transported to Treblinka concentration camp.

The late Queen Elizabeth II did visit Bergen-Belsen, liberated by British forces on April 15, 1945, and was Patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust from its inception in 2005.

The Queen, when she was Duchess of Cornwall, represented the Royal family at Auschwitz for the 75th anniversary in 2020, and the Princess Royal has previously visited.

Last week, Camilla attended a Holocaust reception hosted by the Anne Frank Trust and said: “Let’s unite in our commitment to take action, to speak up and to ensure that the words ‘Never Forget’ are a guiding light that charts a path towards a better, brighter, and more tolerant future for us all.”

The symbol of the commemoration service was one of the freight cars used to transport Jews to their deaths and which now stands directly in front of the main gate where they arrived in overcrowded, airless cattle carriages.

Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust and who accompanied Mala at the moving ceremony, said: “The lessons of the Holocaust remain as urgent as ever. With survivors becoming fewer and more frail, and with antisemitism continuing to surge across the world – we must all commit to remembering [Holocaust] victims and must take action to ensure anti-Jewish racism is never again allowed to thrive.”

And in a tribute to Holocaust victims, Mr Scholz said: “Sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, friends, neighbours, grandparents: more than one million individuals with dreams and hopes were murdered in Auschwitz by Germans. We mourn their deaths. And express our deepest sympathy. We’ll never forget them. Not today, not tomorrow.”