Key and Hager do have something in common
What have John Key and Nicky Hager got in common? Both have been making headlines lately. John Key has given his final speech in Parliament. While many admired his political skills, others have dismissed him as just a trader and money man. Being prime minister had been ‘‘a privilege, an honour and a blast’’, he said in the speech.
Investigative journalist Nicky Hager (with Jon Stephenson) has released another controversial book, following his earlier Dirty Politics. The new book, Hit & Run, contains allegations of war crimes committed by New Zealand troops in a 2010 military raid in Afghanistan, and of a subsequent coverup.
Nicky Hager is admired as a talented journalist by some and dismissed as a trouble maker or Left-wing conspirator by others (including by John Key).
John Key and Nicky Hager are both children of refugees who came to New Zealand after escaping Nazi persecution in Austria. Their families were uprooted from comfortable middle class lives in 1930s Vienna.
After the Nazi takeover, life became untenable for Austrian Jews, with Jewish businesses and professions boycotted and Jews beaten up in the street.
Both John Key and Nicky Hager have family members who perished in Nazi concentration camps.
On a number of occasions John Key has paid tribute to his Austrian-Jewish mother, Ruth, who brought him up alone after being widowed.
Nicky Hager’s background is less well known. Jewish on his father’s side, the family had earlier converted to Catholicism, but became Jewish again under Nazi edict.
His father Kurt was 16 when he escaped Vienna in 1938, initially for Britain, arriving in New Zealand several months later.
I met Kurt Hager in the mid-1980s and asked him about his experiences as a refugee in New Zealand. He recalled both the stigma he had felt of being a foreigner but also the opportunity he had appreciated to put down new roots.
He spoke of years spent to achieve security and a sense of belonging to make up for the earlier losses of his large extended family. ‘‘I wanted to become so established that it would never again come about that one day I was in Vienna and the next day I was a refugee in London, en route to New Zealand.’’
The refugees from Nazi Europe who came to New Zealand in the years before World War II felt lucky and grateful to be in this country.
Some refugees were also excited to be in a country with a Labour government introducing important social legislation. The refugees encountered New Zealanders eager to befriend them but also faced prejudice and suspicion, especially during the war years when some people thought refugees from Nazism might be Nazi supporters.
Senior public servant Reuel Lochore, in a 1951 book about emigrants from Europe in New Zealand, wrote of the settlement ‘‘of people who were wholly unsuited to our conditions’’. But he thought that the children of the refugees, showing ‘‘real genius of adaptation’’, were ‘‘the real success of this migration’’. The children are ‘‘a triumph’’, he wrote.
All refugees, irrespective of their background, struggle to re-establish themselves. They rarely become in the new country what they were in the old. When they arrive, often in their thirties or forties, it is usually too late for them to learn fluent English or to get a prestigious, well-paid job. In a sense, they have sacrificed their own future for the next generation who, they hope, will be better able to reap the benefits and opportunities in the new country.
As another of the refugees I spoke to told me: ‘‘The second generation have gained something both ways. They feel at home in New Zealand and yet we did give them something extra.’’
The children of former refugees are well placed to make their mark. They feel they belong in the society their families once came to as refugees. Some even feel secure enough to go beyond the gratitude of the older generation to become critics. Every society needs critics.
I have singled out John Key and Nicky Hager but there are, of course, many other children of refugees who are passionate New Zealanders, able to contribute in unique ways to their adopted country.
Abbas Nazari, for example, fled Afghanistan and the Taliban, arriving in New Zealand in 2001 as a seven year old. He was one of the refugees rescued from the ship Tampa through Helen Clark’s intervention. Today, he is a university graduate, embarked on a stellar career.
Nicky Hager’s father wanted above all to build a secure new home for his children to grow up in. In his farewell speech, John Key said he hoped his mother would have been proud of ‘‘how it all turned out’’.
This article is a plug for the children of refugees. New Zealand should take its fair share of refugees because this is the right thing to do. It is also worth doing because the country will benefit from the diverse contributions of the children of refugees in the years ahead.
Ann Beaglehole’s interviews with refugees and their children from Nazi Europe may be found in A Small Price to Pay: Refugees from Hitler in New Zealand, and Facing the Past: Looking back at Refugee Childhood in New Zealand.
The children of former refugees are well placed to make their mark. They feel they belong in the society their families once came to as refugees.