Rabbi proposes kindertransport-inspired initiative
‘I have always wondered how I could repay the debt I owe to the kindertransport, who saved my then 11-year-old mother.'
A rabbi in Kent is attempting to set up a ‘Ukrainetransport’ for families fleeing the Russian invasion. Jonathan Romain’s mother fled Nazi Germany on the kindertransport which Quakers helped set up during world war two.
Linking with the charity Refugees At Home, the Maidenhead rabbi tweeted he had been inundated with offers of help in the UK, with more than 500 households offering rooms for refugees. He described it as an ‘exhausting but a wonderful response to a terrible situation’.
‘I have always wondered how I could repay the debt I owe to the kindertransport, who saved my then 11-year-old mother. Now is the time, which is why I am helping to coordinate Ukrainetransport,’ he tweeted. After fleeing the Nazis on the kindertransport, Romain’s mother was looked after by a family in Devon.
Speaking to The Guardian on 6 March, the rabbi said he hopes refugees can be hosted by British families, rather than being put up in hotels, as people fleeing Afghanistan were last year. Those offering help, he said, range from people with ancestors who had to flee during the second world war, and others who are ‘just appalled for humanitarian reasons’.
The rabbi can be emailed at rabbi@maidshul.org.
Comments
We should note that the Kindertransport was begun by Quakers and others nine months before Hitler Germany invaded Poland on 1st September 1939, and ended when the war began. Desparate Jewish families put their young children onto crowded trains to save them from the ghastly cruelty of the Nazi government. That became impossible when the war got under way. My own family, including my Quaker Jewish mother, luckily managed to emigrate to the US in mid-1938 as refugees, largely because my non-Jewish father had found employment in the state of Wisconsin.
Henning Sieverts
Norwich Local Meeting (recently moved from Woodbridge LM)
By SHSieverts@aol.com on 17th March 2022 - 10:35
it’s fascinating how the official governmental scheme now so closely parallels Jonathan Romain’s idea, of ‘ordinary British families’ (and individuals) stepping up to help in such a direct way by hosting refugee Ukrainian families.
How come? - was the Government already thinking along the same lines, or were they super-quick off the mark adopting the rabbi’s idea? Cynically, it has the appeal of not costing much. But morally, and emotionally, it could bring much more, to both ‘sides’ involved.
As another Friend of Jewish descent (my paternal side deriving from Latvia and Lithuania) I also resonate personally to these issues.
Helen Gamsa
Bristol Area Meeting
By helengamsa on 17th March 2022 - 15:34
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