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‘Terrifying…trying to comprehend the scale,’ Prince William says at Yad Vashem

“Terrifying. (I’m) trying to comprehend the scale,” Prince William said at Yad Vashem, viewing the display of shoes left behind by Jews killed in a Nazi extermination camp.

By: AP and World Israel News

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, arrived in Israel Monday night, marking the first-ever official visit by a member of the British royal family to the Holy Land, which was ruled by London from 1922 until 1948 under the British Mandate.

He began his Israel tour Tuesday with a visit to Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, which has recognized his great-grandmother, Princess Alice, as part of the Righteous Among the Nations for her role in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust.

Yad Vashem said Princess Alice “hid the three members of the Cohen family – Rachel, Tilda and Michelle – in her palace in Athens during the Nazi occupation of Greece.”

“Princess Alice personally saw to it that the members of the persecuted Jewish family had everything they needed and even visited them in their hiding place, spending many hours in their company,” Yad Vashem said.

Thanks to her, the Cohen family survived and today lives in France.

The princess died in 1969 and in 1988 her remains were brought to Jerusalem.

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Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev is guiding Prince William through the memorial’s exhibitions detailing the death of six million Jews systematically killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.

William voiced his horror at the sight of shoes left behind by Jews killed in a Nazi extermination camp, Reuters reported.

“Terrifying. (I’m) trying to comprehend the scale,” the Duke said.

He is also set to meet two survivors who escaped Nazi Germany for the safety of Britain.

In a private 1994 visit to Yad Vashem, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, planted a tree there in his mother’s honor.