The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall have been at different engagements in the last week to focus on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Prince Charles commissioned portraits of seven Holocaust survivors and opened an exhibition of them at the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace.
Prince Charles has been an art collector and artist himself for decades and has paired that interest with his role as Patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. He chose seven different painters to create portraits of the seven Holocaust survivors to be displayed first at Buckingham Palace and then at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. The paintings will be a part of the Royal Collection.
To open the exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, Charles and Camilla met with the survivors and their families, as well as the artists. The survivors were all imprisoned in Holocaust camps as children and have been honoured for their involvement in Holocaust education and awareness.
Survivor Helen Aronson was painted by artist Paul Benney; Lily Ebert was painted by Ishbel Mystercough; Manfred Goldberg was painted by Clara Drummond; Arek Hersh was painted by Massimiliano Pironti; Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was painted by Peter Kuhfeld; Rachel Levy was painted by Stuart Pearson Wright; Zigi Shipper was painted by Jenny Saville.
The Prince of Wales also wrote the foreword to the catalogue for the exhibition, including this excerpt:
“Seven portraits. Seven faces. Each a survivor of the horrors of those years, who sought refuge and a home in Britain after the war, becoming an integral part of the fabric of our nation.
“However, these portraits represent something far greater than seven remarkable individuals.
“They stand as a living memorial to the six million innocent men, women, and children whose stories will never be told, whose portraits will never be painted.
“They stand as a powerful testament to the quite extraordinary resilience and courage of those who survived and who, despite their advancing years, have continued to tell the world of the unimaginable atrocities they witnessed.
“They stand as a permanent reminder for our generation and indeed, to future generations of the depths of depravity and evil humankind can fall to when reason, compassion and truth are abandoned.“
The exhibition, Seven Portraits: Surviving the Holocaust, is on at the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace from 27 January to 13 February.
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