The Prince of Wales highlighted the vital importance of “preserving the truth” in the digital age, according to the daughter of Holocaust survivors who was awarded an OBE at Windsor Castle.
Dr Bea Lewkowicz, a filmmaker with the Association of Jewish Refugees, shared Prince William‘s comments after her investiture ceremony on Wednesday.
She stated that William “pointed out that, especially now, it is important to, kind of, preserve the truth, because we live in this era of digital media” amid “Holocaust distortion and rising antisemitism.”
It comes as Jewish charity Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents last year, marking the second-highest annual total, only exceeded by the almost 4,300 reports in 2023.
Dr Lewkowicz, who has dedicated 25 years to documenting the lives of Holocaust survivors and refugees, received her OBE for services to Holocaust remembrance and education.
She is also a project director and co-founder of Refugee Voices, an archive of video testimonies from Jews who fled Nazi Europe.
She added that the prince “thanked me for listening to the survivors and was concerned about the emotional impact and, you know, what it means to listen to those stories”.
Her mother grew up in Slovakia and survived the war with her parents and sister under a false identity and her father grew up in Katowice, Poland, and was sent to six different concentration camps.
She said that when her mother was “hiding in Slovakia” during the war, she listened to the BBC World Service and was “so grateful to Britain for helping to end the war”.
Dr Lewkowicz added she was “very proud to be receiving this award, and really thinking of all the people, of the Holocaust survivors and refugees I’ve interviewed in the last 25 years”.
She said it is important to use recorded testimonies from Holocaust victims “for educational purposes” and to tackle the rise in “contemporary antisemitism”.
She added that she spoke with William about his visit in 2017 to the former Stutthof concentration camp alongside Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg and also how the King honoured Mr Goldberg by making him an MBE.
“I’m grateful to the entire royal family for the various things they have done (for Holocaust survivors),” she added.
She said: “It’s really important, for the first generation, but also for, second generation, like me, to know that in difficult times – and I think Jewish community now finds it quite difficult – that even in those difficult times, the support is there.”
