Critics Say the Prince Wore His Ignorance on His Sleeve

Prince Harry, the younger son of Prince Charles, roiled Britain on Thursday when photos were published showing him wearing a Nazi uniform and swastika at a weekend costume party, an incident that many said demonstrated widespread ignorance of the Holocaust.

A hasty apology from the prince did little to reduce the reproach from home and abroad, with one Jewish group in Los Angeles recommending that the 20-year-old be sent on an educational visit to Auschwitz.

Palace officials at first appeared opposed to sending the prince to view the former death camp in Poland, but today the Sun tabloid, which broke the story, reported that Prince Charles had instructed his son to make a low-profile visit to the site so he could learn more about Nazi atrocities.

The incident has embarrassed members of the royal family, who are to play a major role in ceremonies this month marking the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation.

The prince’s donning of the swastika has triggered a series of debates here -- over younger Britons’ ignorance about the war and the Holocaust and over whether Charles should be a better disciplinarian.

It also prompted uncomfortable recollections about the stance of some royals of the past toward the Nazi regime, including a prewar visit to Adolf Hitler by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Britain’s salivating media led the charge against Harry, the third in line to be king of England.

“Harry the Nazi,” screamed the Sun’s headline, which plastered the photo across its front page. “Outrage at Nazi Harry,” thundered the Evening Standard, which labeled his act a “Princely insult.”

“Front-page news again, for all the wrong reasons,” Sky Television said.

Veterans and anti-fascism groups also complained. Hitler’s drive for dominion over Europe and the world set off the last century’s most devastating war, which included German bombing of London and other major British cities.

About 350,000 Britons were among the 50 million people killed during the war.

Harry’s 22-year-old brother, Prince William, who also attended the costume party, went as a leopard.

It was unclear why Harry chose a World War II German military costume, a light-colored outfit from Nazi Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps, for the private birthday party Saturday in honor of his friend Harry Meade, the son of Olympic gold medalist horseman Richard Meade.

The party was held at the elder Meade’s farm in Wiltshire and attended by about 250 people. The theme of the party was “Native and Colonial.”

Some politicians said the prince, whose past episodes of bad publicity have included underage drinking and an admission that he smoked marijuana, should be disqualified from attending Sandhurst, the elite royal military academy he is to enter in May.

The ginger-haired Harry, long known as the wilder of the two sons of Charles and the late Princess Diana, is given to late-night clubbing, and in October got into a scuffle with a paparazzo when he was photographed outside a West End nightspot.

But he has also sought to show a civic-minded side. After completing secondary school at elite Eton College in 2003, he spent eight weeks in Lesotho working with AIDS orphans, and he recently volunteered with his brother to pack relief supplies for the Red Cross to ship to tsunami victims.

The Sun called Harry the “clown prince” and said his costume “sparked horror.” The paper obtained a photo of the prince, holding a drink in one hand and with a cigarette dangling from the other, a red armband with black swastika clearly visible on his sleeve.

A fellow guest apparently took the picture.

Its publication set off an immediate furor.

Clarence House, the office of Charles and his sons, issued Harry’s apology.

“I am very sorry if I have caused any offense or embarrassment to anyone,” the statement said.

“It was a poor choice of costume and I apologize.”

But that did not go far enough for some politicians, including Michael Howard, the Conservative Party leader, whose relatives perished in the Holocaust.

“It will cause a lot of offense. I think it might be appropriate if we heard from him in person about how contrite he is,” Howard said on BBC radio.

“It is a straightforward Nazi armband, and I think that would offend an awful lot of people who fought in the Second World War and relatives who lost people in that war,” said former Armed Forces Minister Douglas Henderson, adding that Harry’s application to Sandhurst should be withdrawn. The Evening Standard, however, quoted a spokesman for the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst as saying the prince’s enrollment is not in doubt.

“He is not in the army yet, he is not committing a criminal offense, therefore this is not a disciplinary matter,” the spokesman said.

The timing of the row could not have pleased the royal family, as the country was gearing up to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation. Later this month, Harry’s grandparents, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, are to meet with Holocaust survivors and some of their liberators on Holocaust Memorial Day, Jan. 27.

Prince Edward, Harry’s uncle, is to represent the royal family during ceremonies at Auschwitz.

In preparation for the anniversary, British media have stepped up their coverage of the Holocaust. Many authorities here worry that the younger generation is unaware of the evils committed by Hitler and his followers.

“The whole event, the prince’s choice of costume included, indicates a worrying trend of ignorance about the Holocaust that is reinforced by the results of a recent survey that 45% of U.K. residents have never heard of Auschwitz,” said a spokesman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews. “Shocking.”

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, urged Harry to go to Auschwitz, where he would “see the results of the hated symbol he so foolishly and brazenly chose to wear.”

“This was a shameful act displaying insensitivity for the victims, not just those soldiers of his own country who gave their lives to defeat Nazism, but to the victims of the Holocaust,” Hier said in a statement.

An estimated 1.1 million people, mainly Jews, were killed between 1942 and 1945 at Auschwitz and neighboring Birkenau, in what was then German-occupied Poland.

The Nazis killed 6 million Jews during World War II, and persecuted other groups, including Poles, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled and Gypsies.

The spokesman for the British deputies board, who asked not to be identified, said some education might be needed to make Harry and other members of his generation more aware of the atrocities. He noted that the Nazis were not just fighting against Jews but also against all Britons.

Charles and his advisors were criticized for not doing enough to counsel the prince.

“Surely there was someone about who could have advised him not to be such a fool,” said Ian Davidson, a Labor member of Parliament.

Charles has had responsibility for his sons’ upbringing since the death of their mother in a 1997 auto accident in Paris. He and his sons have been close, but media reports suggest that Charles has not reined in Harry’s hard-partying lifestyle since he left Eton.

“The prince of Wales, he’s a humanitarian and he does some terrific work, but I don’t think he has the right discipline over his children, particularly Prince Harry,” Dickie Arbiter, a former Buckingham Palace spokesman, told BBC.