King Charles and Prince William are leading the royal family’s commemorations of the victims of the Holocaust on Holocaust Memorial Day.
On January 27, King Charles, 76, traveled to Poland to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on what was described as a “deeply personal pilgrimage.” The date marks the anniversary of the camp’s liberation by Allied forces on Jan. 27, 1945 and is observed globally as Holocaust Memorial Day.
Marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation, King Charles’s visit carried profound significance as he is the first British monarch to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Meanwhile, in London, Prince William, 42, is set to attend a poignant ceremony where he will join survivors of the atrocities that took place at the concentration camp and elsewhere under Germany’s Nazi regime.
A royal source emphasized the significance of the visit for King Charles, saying, “While His Majesty has found many ways over the years to engage with survivors of the Holocaust, I know this visit to Auschwitz will be a particularly poignant one for him.”
“That’s not only because of the significance of the anniversary, but as an opportunity for him to reflect on the many stories of suffering and courage he has heard from those who bore witness in the very location where they took place,” the palace source added. “As anyone who has visited the camp can avow, it has a profound impact on the soul, bringing home both the scale of the horrors and the lessons that must be learned for eternity.
“In that sense, it will be a deeply personal pilgrimage for The King – paying tribute both as man and monarch,” the source said.
