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Survivor: ‘Prince William took my Holocaust testimony seriously — unlike Prince Harry’
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch shared her impressions from speaking at Eton College
January 20, 2022 10:28
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch shared her impressions from speaking at Eton College
January 20, 2022 10:28Auschwitz survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch has accused the Duke of Sussex of appearing not to take her testimony seriously while he was a pupil at Eton College.
Writing for Radio Times this week, the 96-year-old shared her impressions from speaking at the Windsor public school, where Prince Harry and Prince William enrolled in 1995 and 1998.
In an op-ed published ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day next week, she wrote: “By coincidence, one of the schools at which I have told my story is Eton, when Princes William and Harry were there.
“Of course, Harry wasn’t taking it seriously — just another boring lady who comes to talk about boring things — but William is a different character altogether.”
The piece stressed the importance of educating children about the Holocaust, but suggested that using bitesize clips on TikTok was not the best way to talk about the subject. “Educating children about the Holocaust and Jewish history is so important, but don’t tell me I need to go on TikTok and do it in a 30-second video because that’s how long young people’s attention span is — that’s ridiculous. They should learn to sit down for an hour, and develop an attention span,” she wrote.
Elsewhere, Ms Lasker-Wallfisch said that Prince Charles was “very concerned with the Holocaust”.
The heir to the throne got that interest from his late father, Prince Philip, whose mother, Princess Alice, hid a Jewish family in Athens during the Nazi occupation, she wrote. She has met Prince Charles several times, including when she received her MBE in 2016.
A portrait of Ms Lasker-Wallfisch painted by artist Peter Kuhfeld, commissioned by the Prince of Wales, is set to be displayed publicly in Buckingham Palace.
The art project, which features six other survivors, is explored in BBC2’s upcoming documentary Survivors: Portraits of the Holocaust, which airs next Friday.
Ms Lasker-Wallfisch is a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen camps.
She has credited her role as a cellist in the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau for her survival in the camp.
Speaking to the Press Association in 2020, she recalled: “It was complete fluke that there was a band in Auschwitz that needed a cellist.
“I didn’t think I would arrive in Auschwitz and play the cello there. I was prepared to go into the gas chamber.”
After liberation, she served in the British Army as an interpreter before settling in the UK where she co-founded the English Chamber Orchestra and wed the musician Peter Wallfisch.