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I come from an ordinary British family, with a relatively poor social and economic background. That is far from the world of our royal family. They probably know very little of my world, and I certainly know almost nothing of theirs, except that they are frequently the focus of press and media attention. What we read in newspapers and see on television is not their day-to-day life, but news items and since human beings are fascinated by the weaknesses of famous or influential people, the news we are offered is often based on scandal, or rumours of scandal.Prince Harry was recently photographed at a fancy-dress party dressed in the desert uniform of a German soldier. But he was also wearing a Swastika armband, undoubtedly one of the most powerful symbols of the Nazi regime. People naturally reacted very negatively. The symbol stirs up terrible feelings and memories for huge sections of the population those who lived through terrifying bombardments in our cities, those who fought in the armed services, those who lost family members in six years of war and, above all, those who survived the unspeakable experience of the extermination camps.I was born a few years after the war ended, but in front of our house and behind were ruins of buildings destroyed by bombs. My relatives and many other people who lived through the war shared vivid memories with me. But younger people in Britain know less and less about the horrors of that war. They do not remember it and meet very few people who have a first-hand memory of it. Many of them really do not understand what a shocking experience it was even in my country, and they cannot begin to imagine the madness of the extermination programme carried out in the death camps.A few days ago, a group of Jewish leaders, rabbis, cantors and their relatives thanked Pope John Paul II because he had visited Auschwitz very soon after becoming Pope, he had denounced anti-Semitism as “a sin against God and humanity”, he was the first Pope since Saint Peter to visit a synagogue, and he had placed a prayer for forgiveness in the Western Wall in Jerusalem during the Great Jubilee of the year 2000. They told him his work for reconciliation “has been the cornerstone of your papacy and its relations with the Jewish people”. The Pope hoped the meeting would be “an occasion for renewed commitment to increased understanding and co-operation in the service of building a world ever more firmly based on respect for the divine image in every human being”.The difference between the Prince and the Pope is experience and the memory of that experience. The Pope lived through very troubled times in a part of Europe scarred by the war of which the Swastika is an ugly symbol. The nearest Prince Harry could possibly get to that memory is what his family and his teachers have told him about it. Whatever he learned from them is nothing in comparison with what he now realises as a result of the reactions of so many people, horrified by what he did.I would be slow to condemn Harry. Despite all the stories I heard and meeting so many people who lived through the two World Wars, it was only when I saw hillsides covered in crosses in northern France that I began to realise the cost of war. Perhaps a visit to a war cemetery or to an extermination camp (which Prince Harry will soon make) should be part of the education of young people. One cannot remember things through which one has not lived, but one can be brought to understand why there are three simple words written on war memorials throughout Britain: “lest we forget”.
