The historic visit by King Charles to Auschwitz-Birkenau later this month comes five years after his wife became the first British royal to visit the horror site.
Queen Camilla, then the Duchess of Cornwall, appeared to be visibly emotional at times during a service at the Nazi concentration and extermination camp near Oswiecim, Poland.
It was held to mark the 75th anniversary of the camp's liberation by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945. What the Red Army found there would change the history of the world forever.
Five years later, Charles will become the first reigning British monarch to visit Auschwitz for the 80th anniversary. Speaking to a Holocaust survivor at Buckingham Palace last week, he said: "I feel I must go for the 80th anniversary, (it's) so important."
READ MORE: Prince William to lead commemorations for Holocaust Memorial Day as King pays tribute at Auschwitz
It is estimated that at minimum 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945; of these, at least 1.1 million were murdered. Nine in ten were Jews.
Overall, six million Jews, two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population, were murdered by the Nazis as part of the 'Final Solution' devised by Adolf Hitler.
Against the backdrop of such evil, it is no surprise that Camilla found the memorial service in 2020 to be incredibly emotional. On a freezing cold and misty evening, she walked along the railway lines that once brought prisoners to the death camp before placing a candle at the International Monument
Renee Salt, an Auschwitz survivor who later went on to marry a British soldier, said at the time: "To have the support of the Royal Family is of huge importance, not just to me, but to all survivors, and the collective memory of our country."
Camilla has often appeared to blink back the tears during Second World War commemorations. In 2010, she had to turn her head away during a visit to a church in Prague where Czech soldiers made an heroic last stand.
She also had tears in her eyes last year during a service in Portsmouth to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day in June 1944.
Her father, Major Bruce Shand, won two Military Crosses for his bravery as an Army officer; the first for his actions during the retreat to Dunkirk and the second in North Africa, where he covered the withdrawal of the 6th Rajputana Rifles.
Major Shand, met Winston Churchill before the Second Battle of El Alamein, was captured in November 1942 and held as a prisoner of war until the end of the conflict. He died in 2006.
Meanwhile, the late Queen Elizabeth's first and only visit to a Second World War concentration camp came in 2015, when she made a "personal and reflective" trip to Bergen-Belsen.
"It must have been horrific," she said to navy pilot Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown, then aged 96, from West Sussex, one of the first British officers to enter its gates on April 15, 1945.
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