King's caring words for Holocaust families

THE King and Queen marked Holocaust Memorial day with a Buckingham Palace reception for survivors of the genocide in which six million Jews were killed.

- BY GILES SHELDRICK Chief Reporter

Charles, who is patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, later lit candles with wife Camilla in a solemn act of remembrance on the 81st anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps.

Guests at yesterday’s reception included Helen Aronson, 98, one of just 750 people liberated from the Lodz ghetto in occupied Poland.

She was one of seven survivors whose portraits were commissioned by Charles in 2022. After viewing her portrait yesterday the monarch bent down to kiss wheelchair-bound Mrs Aronson, who politely asked how he was. “All the better for seeing you,” he told her.