The future queen met with Mr Shipper, 91, and Manfred Goldberg, 90, via video call during Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday. The men met at a Nazi concentration camp in Stutthof, Poland, in 1944 when they were teenagers.
The Duchess of Cambridge, 39, spoke with the pair to shine light on one of the darkest eras in history on the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.
Kate has met Mr Shipper and Mr Goldberg before – when she visited Stutthof in 2017. This time their meeting was carried out virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr Shipper told the duchess: “I was so happy, you know. I didn’t need your husband. You are the one that I wanted.”
Kate giggled in response, telling him in reply: “Well Zigi I will tell him you miss him very much.
“And he sends his regards as well, obviously…. it’s lovely to see you again.”
Mr Goldberg explained the origin of their friendship – and how they met again later in life. He also spoke of the importance of defying evil.
He told Ms Middleton: “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent.
“You may remember Zigi and I met in 1944 in the camps.
“By chance, we met again later on and we are friends to this day.”
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His father had fled to the UK two weeks prior and had no idea of his family’s situation – until they were reunited on British shores after the war.
Mr Shipper was also born in January 1930 to a Jewish family in Łódź, Poland.
He was raised by his grandmother and father after his parents divorced when he was five.
In 1939, his father fled to the Soviet Union and they never met again. His grandmother died on liberation day.
Upon being freed in 1945, Mr Shipper received a letter from England from his mum who had found his name on a British Red Cross list.
She asked him to check for a scar on his left wrist suffered when he burned himself aged two. He found the scar and they were reunited.