My family tree is filled with refugees – I support The Independent’s campaign

Refugees Welcome: All I hear from both sides of the Commons is mealy-mouthed nonsense about visas and relatives

I watched hundreds of people struggling through a station subway – holding cases, crutches, babies (AFP/Getty)

In wars, the people always lose – on both sides, on all sides. People get killed, maimed and mutilated. People run, people flee, people lose homes. The people are the great losers of war.

We give them names: civilian casualties, refugees, migrants, exiles. Millions of us have some in our families. I can fill in my family tree with refugees: my father’s uncles and aunts. People on my mother’s side who I hardly know about.

Sometimes refugees survive – like my father’s cousin. He fled across the very land where war is currently raging, though he was running in the opposite direction to where the refugees are fleeing now. In the roll of the dice of war, he survived because he was put in a labour camp; his parents were killed because they stayed at home. And then he survived some more – till last year in fact, till he was 97. That was in its own way, incredible – but not because he did incredible things. He was a taxi driver. And he had two sons. The incredible thing is that he had a life. Everyone he knew up till the age of 17, didn’t. They had made the mistake of being Jews.

My father’s uncles and aunt in France were refugees too. I guess they were what our government likes to call “economic migrants”, a phrase that should be said with a sneer, as if there’s something a bit dodgy about people fleeing to try to find a better life while their rulers fail to provide enough work, food or heating.

They moved from Poland to France and then fled with 2 million other people from the east to the west of France in what France calls “L’Exode”. My relatives were billeted in villages in western France but when the Nazis turned up, they tried to escape and hide. In that sense they were double (or treble) refugees. But two got caught just as someone kind was going to get them on a boat to North Africa, and the other got caught in his pyjamas at 2:30 in the morning. They were arrested for being Jewish. Like I said, the people always lose.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

There’s a terrible lot of losing going on now. In my dreams, government agencies would be busting their kishkes (“guts” in Yiddish), to take in anyone who wanted to come. Instead, all I hear from both sides of the Commons is mealy-mouthed nonsense about visas and relatives.

I watched hundreds of people struggling through a station subway – holding cases, crutches, babies. I nearly forgot that babies can be refugees too. I shouted at the TV: “Have you got ‘rellies’ here? Priti Patel wants to see your visas!” And yet parliamentarians boast about our past generosity.

The Kindertransport is often wheeled out as an example: Jewish children who were indeed given asylum in Britain while their parents were left behind. Fair enough – after all, The Daily Mail had warned its readership of “German Jews pouring into this country”.

So the long and short of it is that in memory and in honour of the refugees in my family, I support The Independent’s Refugees Welcome campaign 100 per cent.

The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered. To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page.