During a visit to Hamburg’s St Nikolai memorial, the remains of a church severely damaged by allied bombing during World War II, King Charles laid a wreath in memory of the victims of allied bombing.
The gesture comes on the final day of Charles’ three-day tour of Germany, his first overseas state visit since ascending to the British throne last year, to strengthen bilateral and European ties.
It comes just weeks before the 80th anniversary of the allied bombing of Hamburg, known as “Operation Gomorrah,” which killed 40,000 people and destroyed large swaths of the city in July.
In response to Nazi air raids on civilian targets in Poland and later in London, the Allies dropped approximately 1.9 million tonnes of bombs on Germany in an attempt to cripple German industry. 500,000 people were killed in the allied raids.
Earlier, Charles paid his respects at the Kindertransporte memorial, which allowed 10,000 Jewish children to flee Nazi-occupied Europe in the late 1930s, mostly to Britain.
“Learning from the past is our sacred responsibility, but it can only be fully discharged through a commitment to our shared future,” Charles said Thursday in a bilingual address to the Bundestag lower house of parliament.
“We must be vigilant against threats to our values and freedoms, and steadfast in our resolve to confront them.”
Later that day, Charles, who succeeded his mother Queen Elizabeth when she died in September, will learn more about the port of Hamburg’s use of green technologies and meet representatives from some of the companies involved.
“Both of our countries are accelerating the expansion of our hydrogen economies, the fuel that has the potential to transform our future,” he told the Bundestag. “I eagerly await Hamburg’s plans to use hydrogen in its efforts to become a fully sustainable port.”
“I have great respect for his decades-long commitment to environmental and climate protection,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who was designated “climate chancellor” during his election campaign in 2021, tweeted.
