More than 600 families volunteer for ‘Ukraine transport’ plan
► MORE THAN 600 families have volunteered to host Ukrainian refugees in a scheme set up by Rabbi Jonathan Romain.
He has now linked up with UK charity Refugees At Home after the extraordinary scale of the response to his announcement in the JC last week.
The scheme is inspired by the Kindertransport that brought Rabbi Romain’s mother to safety and has been dubbed “Ukraine transport”. The Maidenhead rabbi says that he has received offers from households across the UK, including Cardiff, Belfast and Aberdeen.
The volunteers come from a range of communities, with Jews accounting for more than a fifth of potential hosts.
Rabbi Romain said: “I’ve got the names. The charity have got the infrastructure so it’s a good marriage, a good shidduch if you like.”
Rabbi Romain, whose mother escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport, has himself signed up this week to host a refugee and has already cleared his spare bedroom.
He said: “Some 124 of the 603 offers have come from within the Jewish community — partly because it was mentioned in the JC first, partly because many of us have a history that impels us to respond, whether out of a sense of Jewish ethics or from our own family backstory.”
Among the volunteers is Maidenhead Synagogue congregation member Lincoln Ball, from Wargrave near Henley-on Thames. He and his wife Sarah hope to host a refugee in the bedroom that has been left vacant by their daughter, who is at Cambridge.
Retired fireman Mr Ball said that the decision was a “nobrainer” and had been inspired by his great-grandmother having fled what is now Ukraine for Vienna during the First World War, before coming to Britain when the Second World War broke out.
The father-of-two said: “People have been so generous to our family in the past. It just doesn’t take much to think, ‘Well hang on a minute, we need to be generous to someone at the moment.
It’s not just inspired me.
It’s inspired everybody to do something.”
Meanwhile, ORT UK has urged its donors to support the urgent Ukraine crisis appeal of World Jewish Relief (WJR), which has raised £3 million since it was first launched.
ORT UK CEO Dan Rickman told the JC the decision came after a “long discussion” with trustees and staff.
He said: “We’re still fundraising. We’ve still got 8,500 people on the ground in Ukraine. We just feel that with this immediate, immediate urgent aid, as a community we should direct it into one place via World Jewish Relief.”
ORT closed its network of 14 schools and training centres in Ukraine, where many families are sheltering at home, though some have fled to neighbouring countries. WJR expects that a total of £10m is needed to respond to the crisis, the agency’s chair Maurice Helfgott said last week.
Within Ukraine, WJR has offered cash transfers, food, medical equipment, helped with the evacuation of vulnerable people and sent specialists to Poland and Moldova to support local groups helping Ukrainian refugees.
In the UK, WJR has also urged the Home Office to extend humanitarian visas to Ukrainians.
Writing in an open letter, WJR said: “We welcome the current offer of the family scheme and the new sponsorship plan, but we fear it does not go far enough — and certainly does not yet equate to the ‘very generous’ response which Prime Minister Johnson promised eight days ago.” For more information on hosting a refugee, you can go to refugeesathome.org or send an email to Rabbi Romain at rabbi@ maidshul.org
My family were refugees, it’s a no-brainer to be a host now for someone