Prince William has emphasised the need to “preserve the truth” in the digital age, according to Dr Bea Lewkowicz, a Jewish filmmaker and daughter of Holocaust survivors who received an OBE at Windsor Castle. Dr Lewkowicz shared the Prince of Wales’s comments after her investiture ceremony on Wednesday, noting that he highlighted the challenges posed by digital media amid rising Holocaust distortion and antisemitism.
Dr Lewkowicz, who has spent 25 years documenting the lives of Holocaust survivors and refugees, was awarded the OBE for services to Holocaust remembrance and education. She is the project director and co-founder of Refugee Voices, an archive of video testimonies from Jews who fled Nazi Europe. She said the prince thanked her for listening to survivors and expressed concern about the emotional impact of hearing their stories.
The filmmaker’s mother survived the war in Slovakia under a false identity, while her father was sent to six concentration camps. Dr Lewkowicz recalled that her mother listened to the BBC World Service while in hiding and was grateful to Britain for helping to end the war. She stressed the importance of using recorded testimonies for education and to combat contemporary antisemitism.
The honour comes as the Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in the UK last year, the second-highest annual total after nearly 4,300 in 2023. Dr Lewkowicz expressed gratitude to the royal family for their support, noting that Prince William visited the former Stutthof concentration camp in 2017 with survivor Manfred Goldberg, who was later made an MBE by the King.
