King Charles to visit Auschwitz for 80th liberation anniversary

King Charles III is set to visit the Auschwitz death camp in Poland next month to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.

The king, who first visited Auschwitz in 2020 when he was still Prince of Wales, will be joined by representatives from 20 different countries for the anniversary event on 27 January, which has also sent invites to all Auschwitz survivors in addition to state delegations.

Despite the king’s continuing struggle with cancer, for which he receives weekly treatment, organisers say he will be the first British monarch to visit the infamous concentration camp. The last foreign trip taken by his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, was to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 2015.

King Charles has long expressed his commitment to the Jewish community in the UK as well as Poland, where his connection to World Jewish Relief, of which he remains a patron, led to the opening of a Jewish community centre in Krakow.

He has also been a vocal campaigner against antisemitism and maintained a close connection with Holocaust survivors in the UK, championing the yearly Holocaust Remembrance Day and the Holocaust Memorial Trust and meeting with survivors including Lily Ebert and Dr Martin Stern to hear their stories.

Auschwitz was liberated by Russian army troops on 27 January 1945, though it is believed that there will not be a formal delegation from Russia at the commemoration event due to the country’s ongoing war with Ukraine.

When the camp was freed, only around 7,000 prisoners were found alive, a shocking number compared to the more than 1.1 million men, women, and children who were murdered there in the preceding years.

The ceremony is set to begin in a special tent built over the gate to the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp with the haunting words “Arbeit Macht Frei, or “Work Sets You Free”. One of the symbols of the commemoration will be a train freight car positioned directly in front of the gate.