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Serious Semite: Prince Philip and the Jews

The Duke’s conviction against anti-Semitism began at a young age.
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April 15, 2021
The Duke of Edinburgh talks to three Jewish French sisters and Holocaust suvivors, from left, Renee Bornstein, Helene Stein and Antionette Weinberg who live in Manchester during a reception at St James’s Palace honouring Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27, 2005 London, England. (Photo by Fiona Hanson-Rota/Getty Images)

Britain is not a very Jewish country. Unlike America, where there is a separation between church and state, Queen Elizabeth is head of the church and head of state. Although there were attempts to prove the Jewish ancestry of Prince William’s wife, Catherine, whose mother’s maiden name was Goldsmith, it came to naught. The strongest Jewish connection within the royal family was Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whose funeral takes place this Saturday.

Philip was the first royal family member to visit Israel in 1994 when his late mother, Princess Alice of Greece, was celebrated by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations for saving Jews during the Holocaust. Prince Philip said, “we did not know.. that she had given refuge to the Cohen family… I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special.”

The Duke’s conviction against anti-Semitism began at a young age. As a 12-year-old boy, Prince Philip witnessed Nazi attacks while studying at a German school founded by Kurt Hahn, a Jewish refugee who had left the country due to Nazi persecution. “The anti-Semitic frenzy was gripping the members of the National Socialist party in Germany in those days,” he said. A case in point was when a Jewish boy was held down and had his head shaved. Prince Philip gave his cricket cap to the boy to cover his head. “It [was] a small and insignificant incident,” said the prince, “but it taught me a very important lesson about man’s capacity for inhumanity.” Reading his words makes me proud to be British.

Reading his words makes me proud to be British.

This compassion continued throughout his life. For example, British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis told BBC Radio about the time when he and his wife were hosted by the Queen and Prince Philip at Windsor Castle. Prince Philip took Rabbi Mirvis and showed him a Torah scroll in the royal library that had been gifted to the Queen, and he asked about Rabbi Mirvis about the Torah. It had been rescued from former Czechoslovakia and was originally intended to be part of a Nazi museum of exterminated people. (This was the reason that Jewish landmarks in Prague were not destroyed. The Germans had no idea they would be the ones ending up in a museum.)

Part of what made Prince Philip’s kindness towards the Jews so extraordinary were his family connections to Nazis. Three of Prince Philip’s sisters married Nazis. His sister Sophie’s husband, Christoph von Hesse, belonged to the SS, and their son was named after the Fuhrer. Prince Philip’s great Uncle Ernst’s funeral in 1937 was bedecked with swastikas and Third Reich banners. Equally disturbing, Queen Elizabeth’s uncle, the former King Edward VII, and his wife Wallis Simpson, were photographed meeting with Hitler and senior Germans.

Nevertheless, Prince Philip was part of the British Royal Navy and fought the Nazis during World War II, even fighting a brother-in-law in one battle. Since then the British royal family has done everything it can to distance itself from these Nazi connections, including banning his sisters from attending his wedding to Elizabeth in 1947.

Despite his death, Prince Philip’s connection to the Jews lives on through his descendants. His son, Prince Charles, has strong associations with the Jewish community and was friends with the late Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. When Lord Sacks passed away, Prince Charles said that the country “lost a trusted guide and an inspired teacher. I, for one, have lost a true and steadfast friend.”

It is British tradition that citizens receive a telegram from the Queen on their 100th birthday. Since Prince Philip died at 99, two months short of his birthday, he will never receive the telegram from his wife. She is instead the mourning widow, and the nation mourns with her. Following the national seven-day mourning period prior to the funeral, the Queen will apparently also maintain a further 30 days of mourning, just like the Jewish custom of shloshim. The nation and the Jewish community mourns with her.


Marcus J Freed is an actor, author and business consultant. www.marcusjfreed.com @marcusjfreed

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