The remarkable story of an Indian princess who rescued Jewish families from the Holocaust features in a major exhibition opening in London later this month.
Among the exhibits going on display at Kensington Palace is a never seen before item of jewellery that sheds new light on the bravery and humanity of Catherine Duleep Singh, one of the last princesses of Punjab.
The pendant belonged to the family of Ursula Hornstein, a Jewish girl who fled Germany with her family just months before the Second World War.
It was given to her by Catherine who sponsored the family’s escape to Britain.
Catherine and her sisters, Sophia Duleep Singh and Bamba Sutherland, were the daughters of Duleep Singh, the last maharajah of the Sikh Empire, who was deposed at the age of ten in 1848 and later exiled to Britain and Europe.
Although exiled the family became well known figures in British society and politics, including to Queen Victoria, who was godmother to Sophia.
Catherine had spent much time in Kassel, central Germany, living with her lover Lina Schäfer.
In 1938, the princess had a chance encounter in a doctor’s surgery with a Ursula’s mother, Ilse Hornstein, whose husband was facing death in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Michael Bowles, Ursula Hornstein’s youngest son, said Catherine offered to be the family’s guarantor for British immigration “almost immediately”.
Bowles said: “It’s an incredible testament to someone being kind and generous. For our family, it is enormously powerful that someone would have taken the trouble to do that.”
Ilse herself took enormous risks, going to the Gestapo offices disguised as a secretary and securing her husband’s release on the grounds of his First World War hero status, enabling the family to leave Germany.
Also included in the exhibition is the young Ursula’s passport, which is stamped with several swastikas.
The family made it to England in 1939, where Catherine and Ursula formed a such a close bond that the princess gifted her the pendant when the latter converted to Christianity.
The jewel dates from the mid-19th century, which means it could well have been Catherine’s family heirloom.
Catherine was the guarantor not just for the Hornsteins but for a man named Wilhelm Meyerstein and a woman called Marieluise Wulff.
She also took in two families called Reich and Gurtmann and it is believed dozens of people owe their lives to her. She died in Buckinghamshire in 1942.
Mr Bowles added: “The pendant is a real treasure — it was a keepsake for my mother and it symbolises to us what kindness and generosity mean.
“I just hope that refugees in similar situations would be treated with the same kindness.”
After Queen Victoria’s death, Catherine’s goddaughter Sophia became a major figure in the suffragette movement, selling copies of The Suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court Palace.
In 1911 she spoilt her census document with the words, “no vote, no census”; the form and a copy of the paper are included in the exhibition.
Bamba Sutherland considered herself heir to her family’s empire and went back to live in Lahore in the 1940s.
Polly Putnam, curator of the exhibition, said: “They’re fundamentally fascinating people. By focusing in on this extraordinary family, we get to touch on various aspects of history.”
The Last Princesses of Punjab opens at Kensington Palace on March 26
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