Prince Harry did not take the Holocaust seriously as a teenager but Prince William did, according to a survivor who spoke at their school.
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, 96, told the Radio Times she visited Eton while the princes were at the world-famous boarding school and met both of them.
Prince Harry attends the Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey on November 8, 2018. A Holocaust survivor said as a schoolboy he did not take her Holocaust story seriously.However, she suggested the Duke of Cambridge was more engaged with her message than the Duke of Sussex.
Lasker-Wallfisch told the magazine: “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 a cellist who survived the Auschwitz and Belsen death camps after being recruited into the orchestra, The Jewish News reported.
Prince Charles has commissioned an artist to paint her and six other survivors for an exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, at Buckingham Palace.
She said of Prince William: “He gets that interest from his father.”
She added: “Prince Philip’s mother actually hid a Jewish family at her home in Athens during the Nazi occupation.”
Princess Alice of Battenberg, Philip’s mother, hid the Cohen family at her home in Greece.
The majority of the Mediterranean country’s 80,000-strong Jewish community was murdered during the war.
Evy Cohen’s grandmother, aunt and uncle were sheltered by the princess and she told the newspaper: “What Princess Alice did, she saved the whole family.
“Clearly I wouldn’t be alive, I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t be born if it hadn’t been for her.”
She added: “She would often come up to my grandmother’s and my aunt’s small room. She would have tea and have an exchange, talk about religion. Although she was quite deaf, the exchange was very fruitful.”
Prince Harry was criticized in his youth for dressing in Nazi fancy dress for a costume party aged 20.
However, he has taken on a more serious tone in adult life and has spoken out against racism and unconscious bias.
He told the Armchair Expert podcast in May: “I thought I understood life, especially bearing in mind most of the countries I was going to and the communities I was going to were people of color.
“I had to uncover and understand more about unconscious bias. I thought since I screwed up when I was younger and then did the work, I thought I then knew but I didn’t.
“And I still don’t fully know. It’s a constant work in progress and every single one of us has it.”
