Photo: JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty
Prince Charlesis paying tribute to his fatherPrince Philipfor how he helped a young Jewish boy who was being persecuted at their boarding school in Germany in the 1930s.
Charles, 71, spoke at Buckingham Palace late Thursday of his pride in the Duke of Edinburgh, 98, who had been sent to a school in Germany for a short time when the Nazis were on the rise.
Philip attended the German boarding school Schule Schloss Salem in 1933 when he was 12 years old. By that time, the Nazis were in control of German society and Philip’s contemporaries have spoken of how Hitler Youth uniforms and military drills were present at the school.
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Prince Charles and Prince Philip.Matt Dunham - WPA Pool/Getty
The headteacher at the Salem school was Kurt Hahn, a German Jewish man who fled to the U.K., just as Philip was heading to Germany. Hahn would go on to set up the boarding school Gordonstoun in Scotland in 1934, which Philip attended soon afterwards. He later sent his son Charles there.
Highlighting the “precious” links between the monarchy and “our Jewish community,” Charles also spoke about the better known stories of Philip’s mother Princess Alice of Greece, whose life is immortalized in the third season of Netflix’sThe Crown. Princess Alice was known to have helped a Jewish family flee from Greece.
Prince Philip with his mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, in 1960.Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty
And he recounted an amusing story of her response when the family wondered how they would come tovisit her gravewhen she had told them how she hoped to be buried in Jerusalem.
Charles added, “We all wondered how on Earth we were going to be able to visit her grave. She answered: ‘That’s perfectly alright, there’s a very good bus service from Athens!’ ”
Charles attended the pre-Chanukah party on Thursday as he celebrated “the contribution of our Jewish community to the health, wealth and happiness of the United Kingdom.” The royal has done much to foster cooperation and understanding between faiths during his public life. He calls Britain a “community of communities” and pointed out to his guests on Thursday that he has recently traveled to the Vatican for the Canonization of St. John Henry Newman to celebrate the contribution Catholics make to the country, while in India recently he visited the Bangla Sahib Gurdwara to celebrate the 550th anniversary of the birth of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism.
He added, “This time of year, which is so special to Christians and Jews alike, offered an ideal opportunity to arrange this evening’s celebration – because the importance of Unity through Diversity sits at the very heart of our values as a society. It defines what – and who – we are as a country.”
source: people.com
