Kate Middleton, the duchess of Cambridge, has released photo portraits she took of two Holocaust survivors with their grandchildren.
The photos, released on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, are part of a project of the Royal Photographic Society, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and London-based Jewish News.
Kensington Palace shared three behind-the-scenes photos of the wife of Prince William, who is second in line to the British throne, with the subjects of the portraits. They will be part of an exhibition, set to open later this year, of 75 images of survivors and members of their families to mark 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz.
The subjects of the portraits are Yvonne Bernstein and Steven Frank, who both immigrated to Britain after the Holocaust. Frank, photographed with his granddaughters Maggie and Trixie, was imprisoned in the Theresienstadt camp. Bernstein, who was photographed with her granddaughter Chloe, was a hidden child in France.
“I wanted to make the portraits deeply personal to Yvonne and Steven – a celebration of family and the life that they have built since they both arrived in Britain in the 1940s,” Middleton said in a statement. “The families brought items of personal significance with them which are included in the photographs.”
“The harrowing atrocities of the Holocaust, which were caused by the most unthinkable evil, will forever lay heavy in our hearts. Yet it is so often through the most unimaginable adversity that the most remarkable people flourish. Despite unbelievable trauma at the start of their lives, Yvonne Bernstein and Steven Frank are two of the most life-affirming people that I have had the privilege to meet.”
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