The Queen has paid her respects to the tens of thousands of people who died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
She and the Duke of Edinburgh laid a simple wreath at a memorial to all those who perished following their internment at the camp, which was liberated 70 years ago by British forces.
With quiet dignity and the minimum of protocol, the royal couple toured the site in northern Germany which was razed to the ground and is now a museum and memorial to those who died.
The Queen, who is patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, has not visited a concentration camp during previous state visits to Germany.
At the site's Inscription Wall, she and Philip laid a wreath near the words "To the memory of all those who died in this place".
The monument also bears other poignant words in a number of languages including Yiddish, Hebrew and Latin.
Among those who perished at the site were Anne Frank and her sister Margot who died a few months before British troops walked through the gates and liberated those interned on April 15 1945.
Near to where the wreath was laid was a headstone dedicated to the sisters, who became world-famous through Annes diary which was written while she and her family hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam before their capture.
Brigadier Hugh Llewellyn Glyn Hughes, the 2nd Army's deputy director of medical services, was the first to arrive at the site and took control of the relief operation.
He later said: "No description or photograph could really bring home the horrors that were outside the huts, and the frightful scenes inside were much worse."
The British troops found 10,000 prisoners deadwhen they entered the gates, and thousands more suffering from malnutrition, disease and the brutal treatment they had endured.
In the months leading up to liberation, the population of Bergen-Belsen, which was not designed as an extermination camp, had quadrupled to 60,000 and conditions worsened with a lack of water, shelter and sanitation.
Anne and Margot Frank are thought to have died in February 1945 from typhus which ravaged the camp. They were among 35,000 who perished in the months leading up to liberation.
In the weeks that followed 14,000 people died as a result of ill-treatment or sickness and the British burned the camp to stop the spread of disease.