Holocaust survivor: Prince William ‘concerned’ with Shoah lessons, Prince Harry didn’t take it ‘seriously’
After visiting a school to teach about the Shoah, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch said: 'Harry wasn't taking it seriously - just another boring lady who comes to talk about boring things - but William is a different character altogether'
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch has praised the Duke of Cambridge as being “very concerned” with learning about the horrors of the Shoah – but she claimed his brother Harry had not taken the issue “seriously” enough when she delivered a talk to him.
Lasker-Wallfisch, who survived Auschwitz and Belsen death camps because she was recruited into the camp orchestra, said of the Duke of Cambridge’s eagerness to learn about the Shoah:”He gets that interest from his father.
“Prince Philip’s mother actually hid a Jewish family at her home in Athens during the Nazi occupation.”
But commented on her experience of speaking to Harry, the 96-year-old cellist told the Radio Times: “By coincidence one of the schools at which I told my story is Eton, when Prince 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.”
Lasker-Wallfisch is to appear in a BBC documentary that features survivors’ accounts of what the Nazis did, and she is one of seven survivors who the Prince of Wales has commissioned artists to paint for portraits to be displayed at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace.
She also expessed concern in her interview with attempts to teach children about the Holocaust on TikTok.
She said: “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 3 second video … that’s ridiculous.
“They should learn to sit down for an hour and develop an attention span.”
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