King Charles and Camille met two genocide survivors – one from the Holocaust and another from Darfur – at Buckingham Palace this morning. After speaking to the two survivors, the royal couple lit a candle to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp. The powerful gesture was made in memory of the victims of genocide.
After lighting the candle, the king said, “I hope this will be a way of trying to remember all those poor people who have endured – and still do – such horrors for so many years.”
Charles and Camilla wore matching navy for the Friday morning meeting, Charles in a navy suit with a lighter blue tie and Camilla in a smart ruffled navy dress.
King Charles and the Queen Consort were pictured conversing with Holocaust survivor Dr. Martin Stern and a Darfur genocide survivor, Amouna Adamligh at Buckingham Palace.
Dr. Born to a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother, Stern said they talked about the importance of education about the Holocaust and other genocides. He told the PA news agency: “The king was very insistent on also inquiring about other genocides, and so was the queen consort.”
The Holocaust survivor, who was sent to the Westerbork transit camp and the Theresienstadt ghetto in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands after being taken away by agents at the age of five, said lighting the candle is “hugely important”.
Dr Stern said: “The perpetrators would like us to just forget about it and move on to other things so they can calmly get on with committing more of their heinous crimes.
“Lighting a candle in public is a feature that makes it difficult for tyrants and state criminals to quietly continue their mass crimes.”
Additional images of the King and Queen showed them looking gloomy as they lit pillar candles.
The royal family’s official Twitter account later shared a video of the poignant moment.
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Charles and Camilla also met with Amouna Adam, of the persecuted Fur tribe, who survived the genocide in Darfur in western Sudan, as well as representatives of the Holocaust Memorial Day trust.
They discussed ongoing work to ensure lessons learned during genocides are not forgotten.
Laura Marks, chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day trust, said: “What the king could offer us, share with us, was his interest in both the Holocaust, but also the other genocides and the work he does. .
“And he has been a patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day trust as Prince of Wales for many, many years, and we spoke to him about how important that is to us as a charity, because it adds so much credibility and weight when a charity has such a patron.”
She added: “The king is so powerful, so important to draw attention, to draw attention to the dangers of hate speech, hate today, and he was just amazing at that.”
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Holocaust Memorial Day takes place on January 27 every year. It is also used to commemorate the millions killed in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
The theme of Holocaust Memorial Day this year is ordinary people.
It has three main strands: genocide is facilitated by ordinary people, ignored by ordinary people, and persecutes ordinary people.
The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust emphasizes that ordinary people often turn a blind eye to genocide because they believe the propaganda of the murderous regimes.
The website states: “Ordinary people were perpetrators, bystanders, rescuers, witnesses – and ordinary people were victims.
Last year, Charles, then Prince of Wales, commissioned seven portraits of Holocaust survivors for display at Buckingham Palace.
Each of the people featured in the portraits had received an award for services to Holocaust awareness and education.
Charles said at the time: “As the number of Holocaust survivors sadly but inevitably declines, I hope that this special collection will be a further guiding light for our society, reminding us not only of the darkest days of history, but of the interconnectedness of humanity as we strive to create a better world for our children, grandchildren and generations yet to be born; a world where hope triumphs over despair and love triumphs over hate.”
More to follow…