The Prince of Wales has written the foreword for an upcoming memoir penned by Holocaust Survivor Lily Ebert (97) and her great-grandson, Dov Forman (17.)
Born in Hungary, the upcoming book, Lily’s Promise: How I Survived Auschwitz and Found the Strength to Live, will be published by Macmillan in September. Lily was just 14-years-old when she was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. Upon arrival, her mother and youngest siblings were sent to the gas chambers. Lily and her two sisters were later forced to work in a munitions factory near Leipzig until their liberation in 1945. The sisters moved to Switzerland after the war, and Lily came to the UK in 1967.
A Holocaust Memorial Day Trust patron since 2015, Prince Charles stressed the importance of Shoah (International Holocaust) remembrance in a video message during this year’s commemorations.
“As I speak, the last generation of living witnesses is tragically passing from this world, so the task of bearing witness falls to us,” he said.
Held on 27 January, the United Nations General Assembly designated the day as Shoah (International Holocaust) remembrance because its the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. On the annual day, the UN urges every member state to honour the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust ad the other millions of victims of Nazism, reminding people of what the victims went through and educating people to help prevent future genocides.
Last year, the Prince visited Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. During his visit, the Prince spoke of his family’s “immense pride” over the actions of his late paternal grandmother, Princess Alice. In Nazi-occupied Athens in 1943, Alice took in a Jewish family. She was later recognised as a Righteous among the Nations and was laid to rest on the Mount of Olives. While she died in 1969, Alice’s remains were later moved from St George’s Chapel to a crypt below the Church of Mary Magdalene in 1988.
