Britain’s King Charles will attend the ceremony next month marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The monarch, who is being treated for an unspecified form of cancer, will join representatives from 20 countries for the event on Jan. 27.
This is Charles’s second visit to Auschwitz and the first for a British monarch. The last foreign trip taken by his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 2015.
It is hoped that Auschwitz survivors will attend in addition to state delegations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not attend the Auschwitz event.
“The event was not even in the prime minister’s schedule from the beginning,” a source in the Prime Minister’s Office told JNS on Sunday.
Education Minister Yoav Kisch is expected to represent Israel at the ceremony on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945. It is believed that there will be no formal delegation from Russia due to the country’s ongoing war with Ukraine.
Charles is patron of many Jewish charities including World Jewish Relief, which opened a Jewish community center in Krakow. He has expressed his commitment to the Jewish community and to Holocaust remembrance and education in the United Kingdom.
In the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught on the northwestern Negev, Charles condemned the massacres, saying that he “expresses his condolences and deep shock at the criminal and barbaric actions of the terrorist organization Hamas in its attack on the citizens of Israel.”
When news broke earlier this year about the king’s cancer diagnosis, President Isaac Herzog wished him a “full and speedy recovery” on behalf of the Israeli people. Netanyahu and then-Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who is now defense minister, also expressed their wishes for a full recovery.
Earlier this month, former Israeli President Reuven Rivlin claimed that Elizabeth, who had never visited Israel, “believed that every one of us was either a terrorist or a son of a terrorist.”
British monarchs are not allowed to express opinions for fear of creating division and official visits are carried out at the request of the government. However, Elizabeth received Israeli dignitaries including former President Shimon Peres, who was awarded an honorary knighthood in 2008.
