King Charles makes emotional Auschwitz visit and says the horrors must never be forgotten
King Charles makes emotional Auschwitz visit and says the horrors must never be forgotten
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The King said future generations must never allow the horrors of the Holocaust to be forgotten or repeated, as he made an emotional pilgrimage to Auschwitz for the first time. On the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp, Charles joined world and religious leaders to hear harrowing tales from survivors returning to mourn those who perished here in north west Poland. Six million people, mostly Jewish, were slaughtered by the Nazis, with more than a million across the Auschwitz complex.
At the entrance to arguably the most notorious site in Europe, Charles paused under the infamous iron gates bearing the motto ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ - Work Sets You Free - that have come to symbolise the terror of the Nazi regime. He appeared to hold back tears as he laid a special wreath at the notorious ‘Death Wall’ where thousands of prisoners were shot dead, biting his lip after placing a handwritten note with the words “In special remembrance”, personally signed Charles R.
Each anniversary there are fewer and fewer survivors, but even after 80 years there are thousands of them left. Some of those who gathered, among the last witnesses of unimaginable cruelty and the worst crime in human history, proudly wore the blue and white striped pyjamas inmates were forced to wear.
Alongside other European royals including the Danish and Dutch king and queens, Charles listened intently to their testimony of survival during a two hour ceremony outside the gateway where 1.3million people arrived from 1941 until the camp was liberated by Soviet soldiers on January 27, 1945.
