Prince William began his historic Israel tour Tuesday with a visit to Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin.
William arrived in Israel on Monday evening for the first-ever official visit by a member of the British royal family to the country the U.K. once ruled.
For 36-year-old William, second in line to the British throne, this visit is a high-profile event that could burnish his international credentials.
William wore a black kippah and laid a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance at the Yad Vashem memorial, where an eternal flame flickers and the names of extermination and concentration camps are engraved in the floor.
"Terrifying," William said, viewing a display of shoes taken by the Nazis from Jews at a death camp. "[I'm] trying to comprehend the scale."
The prince also met two men who escaped the Nazi genocide through British intervention.
Henry Foner, 86, and Paul Alexander, 80, were among thousands of Jewish children taken in by Britain as part of the "Kindertransports" from a continental Europe that was falling to German conquest.
Alexander, who earlier this week participated in a bicycle ride from Berlin to London that retraced his life-saving voyage as a toddler, told reporters before William's arrival that he had been chosen to meet the prince as the youngest surviving member of the Kindertransport.
"When I put my foot on English soil for the first time, it was like I had been reborn, because I left Nazi Germany and was received by the British people and I have an enormous debt of the thanks to the British people," Alexander said.
After the Yad Vashem visit, the prince met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara, and then President Reuven Rivlin, before heading to Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast to meet Jewish and Arab young people participating in a soccer-based youth program.
William is also scheduled to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian youngsters in the West Bank.
A spokesman for the prince acknowledged the "well-known" and "complex challenges" in the Middle East, and said William's tour, like other tours abroad by British royals, would be nonpolitical and would place a special emphasis on technology and joint Israeli-Arab projects.
William arrived from neighboring Jordan, landing at Israel's Ben-Gurion International Airport late Monday afternoon and then heading for Jerusalem, where he is staying at the King David Hotel, site of the former administrative headquarters of the British Mandate in the region.
He is also scheduled to meet with Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai and attend a reception British Ambassador David Quarrey is holding in his honor on Tuesday evening.
"It is the right moment, we think, for a visit to show how strong the contemporary relationship is between the two countries," Quarrey said Monday.
"The duke is very clear that he wants to come and get under the skin of the country, he wants to get a feel for Israel. He wants to get a flavor of the country," Quarrey said.
On Wednesday morning, the prince will attend another cultural event in Tel Aviv before traveling to the West Bank. On Wednesday evening, he will speak at an event at the British Consulate in east Jerusalem, before wrapping up the trip on Thursday with a visit to his great-grandmother's tomb on the Mount of Olives in east Jerusalem.
Before his arrival, the royal itinerary angered Israeli politicians by describing Jerusalem as being in "the Occupied Palestinian Territories."
Jerusalem Affairs Minister Zeev Elkin, who is running for mayor of the city in the municipal elections this October, called the reference a "distortion" that cannot "change reality."
Quarrey insisted the wording merely reflected decades of terminology used by British governments.
"It is important to emphasize that the duke is not a political figure, this is not a political visit," he reiterated.
Netanyahu welcomed the visit. Speaking at a Likud faction meeting Monday, he said, "Today [Monday] we will receive the Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, for a first, historic visit to Israel by a representative of the British royal family, and we welcome him.
"I must say that is not exactly true because there is a representative here, and that is his great-grandmother, Princess Alice, one of the Righteous Among the Nations who saved Jews in Greece during World War II and asked to be buried here in Jerusalem."
The Netanyahus hosted Prince William at the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem, where he met with the descendants of the family Princess Alice saved from the Nazis.
The princess hid three members of the Cohen family in her palace in Athens during the Nazi occupation of Greece. Thanks to her, the family survived and today lives in France. The princess died in 1969, and, in line with her request to be buried in Jerusalem, in 1988 her remains were brought to the Church of St. Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives.
In Jordan, the prince kicked off his five-day Middle East tour by meeting young scientists, refugees and political leaders. He was hosted by Crown Prince Hussein, 23, a member of the Hashemite dynasty Britain helped install in Jordan almost a century ago. On Monday, the pair watched the England-Panama World Cup soccer match together.
William also attended a reception marking the birthday of his grandmother, and toured the ruins of the Roman city of Jerash, a major tourist attraction his wife Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, had visited as a child when she and her family lived in Jordan.
