by Leslie Baruch Brent
This article appeared first in the March 2010 edition newsletter of the Association of Jewish Refugees.
This ambitious
meeting, starting at 9.40 a.m. and finishing early evening on a Sunday, January 24, was organised by
Meretz U.K., a leftwing Jewish education and pressure-group (“Equality, Human Rights, Peace
and the Environment”). It was an interesting day but poorly attended, possibly
because of the title but probably also because few people are sufficiently
devoted to this cause to want to sacrifice a whole Sunday. I had been asked to
talk about my life and my autobiography, representing as it were the
Kindertransports.
The programme
included a touching film, “The Forgotten Refugees”, describing the plight of
Jewish Iraqi, Iranian and Egyptian refugees who have had a hard life in Israel.
This was followed by a talk by Edwin Shuker, a refugee from Iraq who left that
country in the 1970s. David Rosenberg talked about the 1905 Aliens Act in this
country and the dire effect this had on Jewish immigration (down from about 500
to 3 within 4 years). Subsequent Acts placed further restrictions on those who
managed to gain entry. All this was in marked contrast to British attitudes in
the 1930s and especially of course towards the
Kindertransports.
Another film (“Out
of Sight, Out of Mind: Children of Asylum”) illustrated the appalling treatment
meted out to children who arrived more recently in the U.K. without their
parents, e.g. from Uganda-- a happy ending for some but not for others, who were
repatriated with an uncertain future. Nitzan Horowitz, an Israeli former foreign
affairs correspondent with Haaretz before becoming a Meretz member of the
Knesset and who has lobbied on behalf of children of migrants born in Israel,
was unable to attend. His address was therefore delivered on his behalf, by
telephone, by Ms. Rotem Ilam, a young psychology student who founded the
pressure group “Israeli Children” and who works with him on behalf of the
children of migrant workers. She spoke about the children born in Israel and who
regarded themselves as patriotic Israelis, but who have been under threat of
deportation, despite widespread sympathy among the population. This was followed
by Ben du Preez, formerly of
Amnesty International (Refugee
Rights), who described the chaotic and constantly changing asylum policy of
Israel though he stressed that Egypt’s was far
worse.
A very informative talk was given by
Maurice Wren, Director of AsylumAid, who analysed the problem of asylum seekers
in the U.K. It is a sorry tale: policies have been generated largely by
expediency and the pace has been forced by the BNP and the UK Independence
Party, as well as the tabloid press. The system in place now being aggressive
and with the bar set impossibly high, to act as a deterrent, has unleashed waves
of people smuggling, with all the horrors that entails. The policy was
essentially target-driven and the claims of torture victims were often met with
unwarranted scepticism. Some progress is being made in developing faster and
more credible assessment for those seeking asylum.
The day closed
with a personal account by Pauline Levis of her 5-year (as yet unfinished)
battle to secure the future of an Iranian student, and with a gifted young
professional singer from the Congo (who had grown up in a refugee family in the
UK) singing African songs – a delightful conclusion to an arduous but
interesting day that, despite the small audience, had provoked lively
discussions..
Ed. Postscript: Pauline Levis Iranian student and his family have been given indefinite right of stay in the United Kingdom since the publishing of the article.
Meretz UK Chair Yehuda Erdman on this review :
Dear allA very balanced and well written account of our event. I am glad that at least one person appreciated the enormous effort that Meretz UK and particularly Daniel Zylberstajn took to address this vitally important issue of our day.You can all rest assured that refugees and asylum will be very high up the agenda in this forthcoming election in the UK, but as alluded to by Leslie Baruch Brent, this topic unfortunately has the pace set by the BNP and the UKIP, as well as the tabloid press.
It used to be 30 or so years ago that the British Jews stood four square behind refugees not only because of the memory of the experience of Jews themselves in the UK circa. 1905, but also in more recent times, i.e. 1930's the fate of our people in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. They wre like rats caught in a trap, and I speak personally here although my immediate family made a successful exit from Germany.Later on in the 70's there was an extra-ordinarily vital and eventually successful campaign to obtain the release of Soviet Jews. To this day it is still largely unknown what fate befell our people who were Soviet citizens before 1939 and later in the 2nd World War, the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees who fled the advance of the Nazis to the USSR. Many believe that more than a million perished either through the war, or the massive population transfers ordered by Stalin, or the murders of suspected enemies of Stalin, or of the harsh conditions in the gulags. It is very odd that the huge effort invested in examining the fate of Jews under the Nazis, e.g. by Yad vashem, seems to have run out of steam. Very few have the tenacity or will to look at Soviet crimes against Jewry, as well as all the other persecuted peoples. I could mention the Ukrainians, but there is also the Chechens, Armenians etc.Is there some collective amnesia?
Yehuda Erdman
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
