King makes history with ‘deeply personal pilgrimage’ to Auschwitz

The King will become the first British monarch to set foot on the site of Auschwitz on Monday, as he makes a “deeply personal pilgrimage” to mark the 80th anniversary of its liberation.

Royal sources said he will pay tribute “both as man and monarch” after years of working with Holocaust survivors to preserve their memories and share them with a new generation.

The King will attend the commemoration service at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, while the Prince of Wales represents the Royal family at a London service for Holocaust Memorial Day.

Walking through the camp’s haunting “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate and viewing the collection of personal items confiscated from victims as they entered Auschwitz-Birkenau, the King will lay a wreath at the site known as the Death Wall, where several thousand people were executed under the Nazi regime.

Described as a “deeply personal pilgrimage” for the King, and a “particularly poignant” visit after hearing the stories of survivors in engagements over many years, it will be the first time a British monarch has visited the site of the concentration and extermination camp.

Around 50 survivors are expected to make the journey this year, compared with 300 a decade ago.

At a Holocaust education event at Buckingham Palace earlier this month the King said about visiting: “I feel I must for the 80th anniversary,” adding: “It’s so important.”

A source close to the King said: “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.

“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.”

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said the presence of the King would “elevate” the event on a global stage, being “quite a signal to the world” of its significance.

“I’m just really grateful, delighted and proud that the King is making this visit in this significant year,” she said.

The only Holocaust survivor able to make the trip to the ceremony from Britain for what will be a long day in cold weather is Mala Tribich, who was born in Poland in 1930 and was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp and Bergen-Belsen.

Her mother and sister were shot and, after being liberated by the British Army, she was reunited with her brother in England.

The service on Monday afternoon will be watched by heads of state and political leaders including Emmanuel Macron, the French president, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany along with members of the Royal families of Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain.

No politicians are to be permitted to speak at the ceremony, with the floor given over to survivors.

Ahead of the anniversary, Sir Keir Starmer paid tribute to the Jewish people murdered by the Nazi regime and renewed his commitment to ensure all schools across the country teach students about the genocide.

The Prime Minister said: “The Holocaust was a collective endeavour by thousands of ordinary people utterly consumed by the hatred of difference.

“That is the hatred we stand against today and it is a collective endeavour for all of us to defeat it.

“We must start by remembering the six million Jewish victims and by defending the truth against anyone who would deny it.”

Sir Keir, who visited Auschwitz earlier this month, said: “As we remember, we must also act,” pointing to other atrocities in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur which followed the Holocaust.

Making the journey to Auschwitz for the first time, the King, who has visited other former concentration camps, is patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and has personally commissioned portraits of British survivors for the Royal Collection Trust.

Queen Elizabeth II also never visited, withstanding some criticism for the decision – blamed on the Foreign Office – for not making it part of a 1996 tour to Poland. Her itinerary was updated to include a wreath-laying at Umschlagplatz, in Warsaw, where more than 200,000 Jews were transported to Treblinka concentration camp.

She made her first visit to a Second World War concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen, in 2015, and was Patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust from its inception in 2005.

In 2005, she attended the 60th anniversary commemorations in London and hosted a reception for survivors at St James’s Palace.

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

In 2020, the King – then Prince of Wales – spoke at the World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, and laid a wreath to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The Prince and Princess of Wales visited the museum at the former Stutthof concentration camp in 2017, meeting survivors and describing the experience of seeing it as “shattering”.

When asked why the King and late Queen before him had never paid a visit to Auschwitz, multiple sources expressed surprise that they had not and sought to check that it was true.

One pointed to the relative logistical challenges of including the site, which is around 45 miles from Krakow, in a Royal tour, and emphasised that the travel of the monarch is largely at the direction of the FCDO.

Another spoke of the changing approach to commemorations over the years. In the decades after liberation, they said, most survivors felt unable to talk about their experiences and, in some cases, felt pressure not to.

As public awareness grew, and aging survivors felt a sense of duty to ensure the next generation heard and understood the atrocity, Holocaust Memorial Day was first marked in 2001 and members of the Royal family were involved from its inception.

Last week, the Queen attended a reception hosted by the Anne Frank Trust, to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

In a speech, she said: “The deadly seeds of the Holocaust were sown at first in small acts of exclusion, of aggression and of discrimination towards those who had previously been neighbours and friends.

“Over a terrifying short period of time, those seeds took root through the complacency of which we can all be guilty: of turning away from injustice, of ignoring that which we know to be wrong, of thinking that someone else will do what’s needed – and of remaining silent.

“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.”