King Charles will travel to Auschwitz to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp
The 76-year-old monarch will be among the international visitors to Poland for the commemoration on 27 January, and he will also meet with the country's president, Andrzej Duda during his trip.
16 January 2025
According to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, the commemoration will begin in a tent erected over the gate to the camp - which was liberated by the Soviet army in January 1995 - and will see a symbolic freight car stationed in front in recognition of the fact many victims were brought there by train.
While 1.1 million people, mostly Jewish, were killed at Auschwitz, around 7,000 prisoners were at the camp at the time of its liberation and the focus of the commemorations will be on the remaining elderly survivors.
Confirmation of Charles' visit came shortly before the king was due to meet with people involved in education projects designed to share memories of the Holocaust.
Guests at Buckingham Palace on Monday (13.01.25) afternoon include Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg, now 94, who was born into a Jewish family in Germany in 1930 and endured slave labour in Latvia before being held at the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland.
After World War II ended, Manfred came to the UK and in recent years has shared his story in order to teach younger generations about what happened during that time.
In 2022, Charles - who was Prince of Wales at the time - commissioned portraits of seven Holocaust survivors, including Manfred.
He said at the time: "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."
The visit will be the king's fifth trip to Poland, with his most recent coming in 2008 with his wife Queen Camilla, who was Duchess of Cornwall at the time.
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