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Britain’s Prince William voiced horror over a Nazi death camp exhibit at Israel’s Holocaust memorial in a somber start on Tuesday to the first official British royal visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

Wearing a black Jewish skullcap, William, second in line to the throne, 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 at the memorial’s museum of shoes taken by the Nazis from Jews at Majdanek death camp. “(I’m) trying to comprehend the scale.”

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Tens of thousands of Jews and other victims were killed at the camp, near Lublin in what is now Poland.

After the tour, the prince was greeted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, at their official residence in Jerusalem against the backdrop of the British and the Israeli flags.

“Welcome to Israel, a great historic visit. The whole people of Israel are excited,” Netanyahu told William, in a recording issued by the prime minister’s office.

At a meeting with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, the prince, on a visit described by Britain as non-political, said he hoped “peace in the area can be achieved.” Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014.—Reuters

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