Prince of Wales To Discuss Battenberg Grandmother in a Film
The Prince of Wales is set to recall his other, often-overlooked, grandmother, the late Princess Andrew of Greece, born Princess Alice of Battenberg. In royal photographs Princess Andrew is the mysterious lady seen wearing a somber nun’s habit, as she did at the coronation of her daughter-in-law in 1953.
The Prince will appear in a film, The Rescuers: Heroes of the Holocaust, that will tell the stories of 12 people who helped save Jews from the Nazis. These people are estimated to have helped save 200,000 European Jews.
Princess Andrew, mother of the Duke of Edinburgh, hid Jewish friends in the royal palace in Athens and she was interrogated by German officials. Family relationships probably drew extra German attention, both negative and positive, to this princess; she was the sister of Lord Louis Mountbatten and the Crown Princess of Sweden (later Queen Louise), as well as being the mother-in-law of several German princes prominent in the German military or the Nazi Party. Her cousin, Prince Victor zu Erbach-Schönberg, had served as the German ambassador to Greece until the occupation of Athens in April 1941. It seems that German officials assumed that she would be supportive of the Nazi regime.
Although most of the Greek royal family fled when World War II came to Greece, Princess Andrew and her sister-in-law, Princess Nicholas (mother of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent) stayed in Athens. She assisted the Red Cross, helped run a soup kitchen, and brought medical supplies in from Sweden after visits to her sister, the Crown Princess. She also organized shelters for orphaned children. Read more…
