Occupied Jerusalem: Prince William on Tuesday visited Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
William arrived on Monday night in the first-ever official visit by a member of the British royal family to the tumultuous region London once ruled.
The memorial has recognised Prince William’s great-grandmother, Princess Alice, as part of the Righteous Among the Nations for her role in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust.
Yad Vashem said Princess Alice “hid the three members of the Cohen family — Rachel, Tilda and Michelle — in her palace in Athens during the Nazi occupation of Greece”.
It said: “Princess Alice personally saw to it that the members of the persecuted Jewish family had everything they needed, and even visited them in their hiding place, spending many hours in their company.”
Thanks to her, the Cohen family survived and today lives in France, it said.
The princess died in 1969 and in 1988 her remains were brought to Jerusalem.
In a private 1994 visit to Yad Vashem, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, planted a tree there in his mother’s honour.
Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev guided Prince William through the memorial’s exhibitions detailing the death of six million Jews systematically killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the Second World War.
William meets two Holocaust survivors
Britain’s Prince William met two men who survived the Nazi genocide thanks to British intervention.
Henry Foner, 86, and Paul Alexander, 80, were among thousands of Jewish children taken in by Britain as part of the 1930s “Kindertransport” from a continental Europe that was falling to German conquest.
Alexander, freshly back from a bicycle ride that retraced his life-saving voyage as a toddler, said he was chosen to meet the prince as the youngest member of the Kindertransport.
“When I put my foot on English soil for the first time, it was like I had been reborn, because I left Nazi Germany and was received by the British people and I have an enormous debt of the thanks to the British people,” Alexander told Reuters.
Originally from Leipzig, Alexander was reunited with his mother, who reached Britain the day before World War Two erupted, and with his father, who survived Nazi internment at Buchenwald. Many other kindertransport children were less lucky.
Foner, whose original name was Heinz Lichtwitz, was taken from Berlin to the Welsh city of Swansea in 1939, two years after his mother committed suicide — a victim, he believes, of despair at the doom gathering around Europe’s Jews.
Foner received postcards from his father until the war cut off mail contact. In mid-1942, the elder Foner told his son in a final letter delivered through the Red Cross: “Our destiny is very uncertain.” Months later, he was murdered at Auschwitz.
The correspondence was included in Yad Vashem’s Kindertransport exhibit, as well as in Foner’s memoir, a copy of which he said he hoped to present to Prince William.
“I was a six-year-old refugee kid, and here I am giving a book I wrote, to honour my father, basically, to a member of the royal family,” he told Reuters. “It’s great honour for me to be able to say thank you, symbolically, to the British people who saved my life.”
Later in the day, the prince will see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin before heading to Jaffa and Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast to meet young people participating in a football-based youth programme.
Prince’s itinerary raises hackles
Prince William landed in Israel on the first official trip by a member of the British royal family, welcomed by a government seeking to smooth over a dispute surrounding the political status of Jerusalem.
But William’s plan for Thursday, drew a protest from Zeev Elkin, Israel’s minister of Jerusalem affairs, who accused the prince of “politicising” his visit. Elkin demanded that the term “Occupied Palestinian Territories” be stricken from the official itinerary when referring to his visit to occupied Jerusalem’s Old City. UK Ambassador David Quarry said the wording would not be changed because it represents longtime UK policy on occupied Jerusalem, adding the prince is “not a political figure”.
But the controversy over the term didn’t extend to Israel’s highest ranks, which focused on the historical nature of the visit.
The public criticism from Elkin highlighted some of the political landmines of a visit to Israel that have prevented Queen Elizabeth and other royals from making an official trip for 70 years.