(JNi.media) The ruler of the Principality of Monaco, Prince Albert II, on Thursday issued a formal apology for his country’s role in deporting Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II, the World Jewish Congress reported.
“To say this today is to recognize a fact. To say it today, on this day, before you, is to ask forgiveness,” Prince Albert said in a speech that recounted how Monegasque police deported several dozen Jews, including Jews who had sought refuge there in what they expected would be a safe haven, based on the principality’s political neutrality.
With French Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld at his side, Albert unveiled a monument at the Monaco cemetery carved with the names of Monaco’s deported Jews. The date of the events, August 27, marks 73 years since Monegasque authorities cowered to pressure from Nazi-occupied France, and rounded up some 66 Jews on August 27, 1942.
“We committed the irreparable in handing over to the neighboring authorities women, men and a child who had taken refuge with us to escape the persecutions they had suffered in France,” Albert said at the unveiling ceremony. “In distress, they came specifically to take shelter with us, thinking they would find neutrality.”
EJC President Moshe Kantor hailed the apology, saying in a statement, “seventy years after the Holocaust, it remains important that in each country where the Nazis and their collaborators enabled the deportation of Jews to their deaths there should be a permanent and official memorial and ceremony … We also welcome Prince Albert’s poignant words today at the ceremony, which more than anything, encapsulated the value of this study and introspection that he has personally led in recent years.”