King Charles has spoken about his renewed sense of optimism on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau to witness a flourishing Jewish community just miles from the site of the camp.

The king was speaking at the Jewish Community Centre Krakow on Monday, which is now the hub of the city’s revitalised and growing Jewish community.

The centre, inspired out of a conversation the King had with a Holocaust survivor in 2002 and constructed in 2008, has 1,100 members, including 58 Holocaust survivors, with over 100 people regularly attending its weekly Friday night dinners.

As well as arranging initiatives for the local Jewish community, and a place for practical support and social connection for older members, including Holocaust survivors, the centre has also assisted some 380,000 displaced Ukrainian refugees in Poland.

Many of its volunteers, Jewish and non-Jewish, assist refugees with settling issues and concerns. The centre’s Free Shop provides food and essential items to refugees.

The centre sits just miles from the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp

His Majesty said he took “immense pride” in formally opening the centre alongside Queen Camilla and was “filled with hope and optimism at the life and energy that coursed throughout this building.” Returning today, and witnessing the “wonderfully vibrant” community, he said his sense of hope and optimism “has only grown”.

He added: “Here in Krakow from the ashes of the Holocaust, the Jewish community has been reborn, and there is no greater symbol of this rebirth than the Jewish Community Centre.”

The centre and other Holocaust education projects is how “we recover our faith in humanity,” the King said.

To be visiting Poland and Auschwitz on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau was for him a “sombre and indeed a sacred moment”.

“It is a moment when we recall the depths to which humanity can sink,” he said. “It is a moment also to recall the powerful testimony of survivors such as Lily Ebert, who so sadly passed away in October, and who collectively taught us to cherish our freedom and challenge prejudice, and never to be a bystander in the face of violence and hate.

“In a world that remains full of turmoil and strife, that has witnessed the dangerous re-emergence of antisemitism, there can be no more important message [than that], especially as the United Kingdom holds the presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.”

He said as the numbers of those who remember the Holocaust become fewer, “responsibility for remembrance rests far heavier on our shoulders and on those generations yet unborn.”

He said in remembering the past “we inform our present and shape our future.”

The King spoke of his optimism for the future after seeing the city's Jewish community 'reborn'

Jonathan Ornstein, CEO of JCC Krakow since its founding in 2008, introduced His Majesty and thanked him for “giving Krakow’s Jewish community the most precious thing possible: life”.

Ornstein told the JC: “The JCC Krakow is the centre of Jewish revival in Poland. It means so much that in a world of rising antisemitism, Jewish life is once again flourishing in Krakow, so close to Auschwitz.”

The centre, which was designed by and continues to be supported by World Jewish Relief, receives about 100,000 visitors a year.

Maurice Helfgott, chair of WJR, told the JC it is “profoundly moving and inspiring” to have the King choose to be WJR’s patron and to spend “so much of his time earnestly engaging with and interested in our many projects”.

While at the centre, His Majesty met with two of the Holocaust survivors supported by it, Zofia Radzikowska, 90, and Ryszard Orowski, 84.
Radzikowska is at the centre every day, according to volunteers, and is one of its most active members, running the JCC choir and formerly editing the JCC newspaper. She also teaches Torah to all community members at JCC’s weekly Shabbat dinners. Orowski, meanwhile, a JCC Board member, was one of the group of survivors who met King Charles in 2002 which inspired the centre’s creation, and then met him again during the official opening of the JCC in 2008.

His Majesty was then presented with a gift created by children of the Frajda Preschool and Nursery, the first facility of its kind to open in Krakow since the Holocaust.

Following his visit to the JCC, the King will have an audience with Polish President Andrzej Duda and then join heads of state including other European royalty, French President Emmanuel Macron and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 1.1 million people were murdered, most of them Jews.

There His Majesty will pass through the infamous ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ gate, learn about education and commemoration efforts, and view tributes laid by about 50 survivors of the Nazi death camp earlier in the day, before laying a wreath himself at a reconstruction of the Death Wall, where thousands of prisoners were shot.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who lay a wreath in commemoration during a visit last week to the sprawling, ruinous site of Birkenau, pledged to make Holocaust education a “truly national endeavour” to combat Holocaust denialism.