£200k raised to bring 100child refugees to UK

JEWISH DONORS have raised almost £200,000 in the past four weeks to bring 100 refugee children to Britain.

Nic Schlagman, a trustee for Masorti Judaism and the Noam youth group, launched the campaign after coming up with the idea during a Shabbat dinner with his family.

He said that British Jews saw parallels between the refugees and those who, like his grandmother, arrived here on Kindertransport.

“Quite clearly, something very powerful has resonated with the British Jewish community about these refugees,” he added. “There is a degree of increased empathy because there are shared experiences between people’s family stories and what’s going on now.”

The campaign asked Jewish families, synagogues and activist groups across the community to raise £2,000 each. So far they have donated £195,000 .

To date, 53 children from the Calais camp known as “the Jungle” have been reunited with their families already in Britain, including two who arrived on Tuesday morning. Another 47 are due to make the trip in the next few weeks.

Mr Schlagman, who has worked with refugees for 10 years, said he was “incredibly proud and humbled to be part of a community which doesn’t just talk good values, but also backs up good values”.

Two weeks ago in an interview with the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis claimed that many Jewish teenagers and students were living “in a bubble”.

He warned against the selfish inclinations he saw in young people, urging them to leave their comfort zone and “do better” in helping communities beyond Anglo-Jewry and Israel.

This week he expressed his joy at the success of the campaign and saluted “the endeavour and generosity of the Jewish community. This is a truly exceptional achievement — congratulations to all those who have worked so hard to help change the lives of these children for the better.”

The fundraising campaign was part of a wider Safe Passage UK project, started by activist group Citizens UK.

Jude Williams, the chief executive of Tzedek, an anti-poverty charity which worked with Mr Schlagman on the fundraising, said the community was “incredibly generous. The whole campaign really resonated with people because they could empathise with it. So many of us have a refugee story in our recent past.

“Within five minutes of sending an email round to my family, we had raised £2,000.My father was a refugee in Britain. He was kept in camps after the war, looking for somewhere to live and build a life.

“It was a cross-communal effort. I’m glad to be part of a Masorti group that wanted to do something but it wasn’t about just one denomination.”

Rabbi Miriam Berger of Finchley Reform Synagogue was at St Pancras International station to see one of the child refugees arrive on Tuesday. She described “the utter joy and relief on the faces of the little boy and his uncle who came down from Manchester to meet him.

“In that moment, I could feel the presence of my great-grandparents Nathan and Pearl Mann, who in 1939 met a little boy named Walter off the Kindertransport and gave him a new

chance at life, bringing him into their home to live with my grandma and her sisters.”

Raymond Simonson, chief executive of the cross-communal community centre JW3, sent out an invitation for staff to donate. In 24 hours, they had raised £4,000.“We were aiming for £2,000 and I was blown away by their generosity,” he said.

Ruth Green, a UJIA trustee and

member of Highgate United Synagogue, raised £4,500 for the cause by holding a benefit performance of The Pianist of Willesden Lane.

One family who bought tickets said their children had wanted to donate the inheritance their grandparents had left them.

“I’m really inspired,” Ms Green said. “I’m not a child of a refugee who came over in the Second World War. But we were all refugees once and that resonates very strongly with me.”