Queen Elizabeth visits Bergen-Belsen
June 26, 2015
Queen Elizabeth II visited the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on Friday morning on the last day of her three-day state visit to Germany, which began in Berlin on Wednesday with an official reception and continued in Frankfurt in Thursday, where ecstatic crowds waited for hours to get a glimpse of the monarch as she made her tour around the city.
The reaction Thursday was a positive contrast to the queen's awkward moment at her reception on Wednesday, when German President Joachim Gauck presented her with a painting based on a photograph of herself from 1930, wherein she is sitting on a horse and her father, George VI, is holding the reins.
Elizabeth was perplexed by the work, noting that blue was a "funny color for a horse," and pointing to one figure in the painting, asking Gauck "is that supposed to be my father?"
Historic first visit
The trip to Bergen-Belsen in the German state of Lower Saxony, north of the city of Hanover, marked the first time a British monarch has visited a concentration camp.
Bergen-Belsen was the only Nazi concentration camp liberated by the British. Queen Elizabeth laid a wreath for the dead and visited a special memorial to the diarist Anne Frank, who died at the camp, and her sister Margot.
She then met with a group of survivors and liberators, as well as representatives of religious communities.
The trip to the camp was an important one for a royal family that has had a few scandals relating to Nazism in the past - the queen's uncle, Edward VIII, who abdicated in favor of his brother in 1936 after less than a year as king, was privately accused of harboring Nazi sympathies before World War II. The queen's grandson, Prince Harry, also caused a stir in 2005 when he wore a swastika armband and a brown uniform to a costume party.
The prince promptly apologized for the incident.
Following the trip to Bergen-Belsen, the queen and her husband, Prince Philip, will return to Great Britain on Friday evening. This was the queen's fifth state visit to Germany, her last one coming over a decade ago in 2004.
es/sms (AP, dpa, Reuters)