Jewish filmmaker told by Prince of Wales ‘it’s important to preserve the truth’

The daughter of Holocaust survivors said the Prince of Wales told her it is important to “preserve the truth” as she was made an OBE at Windsor Castle.

Speaking to the Press Association following the investiture ceremony on Wednesday, Dr Bea Lewkowicz said William “pointed out that, especially now, it is important to, kind of, preserve the truth, because we live in this era of digital media” with “Holocaust distortion and rising antisemitism”.

It comes as the Community Security Trust, a Jewish charity, said it received record numbers of reports of antisemitic acts last year, totalling 3,700 incidents, making the annual total second only to 2023, when there were almost 4,300.

Dr Lewkowicz, a filmmaker with the Association of Jewish Refugees – who has dedicated 25 years to documenting the lives of Holocaust survivors and refugees, was made an OBE by the Prince of Wales for services to Holocaust remembrance and education.

She is also a project director and co-founder of Refugee Voices, an archive of video testimonies from Jews who fled Nazi Europe.

She added that the prince “thanked me for listening to the survivors and was concerned about the emotional impact and, you know, what it means to listen to those stories”.

Her mother grew up in Slovakia and survived the war with her parents and sister under a false identity and her father grew up in Katowice, Poland, and was sent to six different concentration camps.

She said that when her mother was “hiding in Slovakia” during the war, she listened to the BBC World Service and was “so grateful to Britain for helping to end the war”.

Dr Lewkowicz added she was “very proud to be receiving this award, and really thinking of all the people, of the Holocaust survivors and refugees I’ve interviewed in the last 25 years”.

She said it is important to use recorded testimonies from Holocaust victims “for educational purposes” and to tackle the rise in “contemporary antisemitism”.

She added that she spoke with William about his visit in 2017 to the former Stutthof concentration camp alongside Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg, and also how the King honoured Mr Goldberg by making him an MBE.

“I’m grateful to the entire royal family for the various things they have done (for Holocaust survivors),” she added.

She said: “It’s really important, for the first generation, but also for the second generation, like me, to know that in difficult times – and I think Jewish community now finds it quite difficult – that even in those difficult times, the support is there.”