“Our age is a different age,” he said, “the words are not the same, the perpetrators are not the same perpetrators but it is the same evil, and there remains only one answer: Never again.”

“This Germany will only live up to itself if it lives up to its historical responsibility,” he added. “We fight anti-Semitism. We resist the poison that is nationalism. We protect Jewish life. We stand with Israel. Here at Yad Vashem, I renew this promise before the eyes of the world.”

President Emmanuel Macron of France appealed for unity and for states to put aside controversy over history.

“This is not just history that one can read this way or another,” he said, speaking in French. “No. There was justice and there is history with proof and evidence, and there is the life of our nations, of our states. Let us not confuse between these things so we won’t be engulfed once again in those horrific and dismal, dire times.”

Calling for “friendship, not hatred,” he said, “What better or greater symbol is there than to see us all convened her today, united.” he added, “It is incumbent on Europe to remain united.”

Prince Charles called the Holocaust’s lessons “searingly relevant to this day.”

“Hatred and intolerance still lurk in the human heart, still tell new lies, still adopt new disguises and still seek new victims,” he said, adding that the language used too often “turns disagreement into dehumanization.”

“Real violence ensues, and acts of unspeakable cruelty are still perpetrated around the world against people for reasons of their religion, their race or their beliefs,” Charles said.