Following the passing of the UK’s Queen Elizabeth II, The World Jewish Congress expressed its condolences over her death.
“The World Jewish Congress and its more than 100 Jewish communities across the globe join the nation and people of the United Kingdom, and British Jewry, in mourning the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, during whose 70-year reign Jewish communities in Great Britain, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and across the Commonwealth have flourished and grown in peace and security,” WJC President Ronald S. Lauder said.
He further stated that “she and her family were beloved symbols of resistance to Nazi tyranny, refusing to leave London during the worst times of the Blitz and standing in solidarity under siege with their compatriots.”
She has been, according to Lauder, a source of both inspiration and comfort to many throughout her entire life, from Anne Frank in her hiding place in Amsterdam to just a few years ago in 2015, when she and her late husband Prince Philip “visited the former Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany, where Anne Frank died, to commemorate its liberation by British troops.”
Anne received a postcard with a photograph of the 10-year-old Princess Elizabeth from her aunt in May 1937. She later put it on the wall of her hiding place in the annex and wrote in her diary about Elizabeth when the future queen celebrated her 18th birthday in June 1944, two months before Anne’s hiding place was revealed.
“Queen Elizabeth’s refusal to flinch in the face of evil, but instead to fight it with every formidable fiber of her character, will be an inspiration for generations to come,” Lauder said.
“On behalf of Jewish communities across the globe, I extend our deepest condolences to her family, and to the nation and people of the United Kingdom. May her memory and her example be for a blessing.”