Jonathan Romain treasures a picture of his mother as a child growing up in Germany.
What happened to his mother, Gabriele Hertzberg, is part of the reason he’s decided to offer the two spare rooms at his home in Maidenhead, Berkshire, to a Ukrainian family.
“My mother came over from Nazi Germany as an 11-year-old child. She got over here just in time in 1939 and she was a refugee,” he said.
“She came alone to a strange country, a language she’d never spoken before and was taken in under the Kindertransport scheme and was given wonderful hospitality for about six months by a Quaker family in Devon. She’s never forgotten that.
“I grew up with that story about how she’d been loved by that family and how Britain had opened its arms and it’s part of my DNA really.
“If it hadn’t have happened, she wouldn’t have lived, I wouldn’t be here talking to you now and so it’s the turn of my generation now to step up in this disaster.”
Weaning Europe off Russian energy will highlight cost of Ukraine invasion at home
Ukraine invasion: Germany commits €100bn to boost military in wake of Russian attack
Ukraine crisis: Germany halts approval of Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia
Jonathan and his wife are already preparing the rooms. One, they hope, will be for children. They’re filling it with toys their grandchildren play with when they stay.
What chemical and biological weapons could Russia have – and what has it used before?
“On a personal level my wife and I have children, they’ve all grown, up so we’ve got spare rooms so we though, right, let’s offer them to Ukrainians and give a family not just refuge but the warmth of human kindness, if you like, because that makes all the difference,” he said.
Jonathan is the rabbi at Maidenhead Synagogue. He began working with his local community to find other families willing to offer rooms. He’s been inundated with responses and has heard from more than 800 people right across the UK.
‘People are really trying to make the refugees feel at home’
“They’re all over the country from Kent to Aberdeen. People who’ve got large houses, people who’ve got a tiny flat but say ‘we’ve got a sofa so we can use that’,” he said.
“And also what’s really nice is that people have been making the extra effort to match themselves to who might come.
“For instance there’s a lady who emailed me to say she was quite elderly and her husband has kidney problems and is on dialysis.
Follow the Daily podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker
“I thought the email was going to end ‘so we can’t help but wish you well’ but no, she said ‘so if you’ve got a family with someone also on dialysis send them to us because I know how to look after them and I can take both them and my husband to the hospital at the same time’.
“So people are really trying to make the refugees feel at home,” he said.
“I think people have been crying out across the country for this to happen and that’s why we’ve had this tremendous response.
“As always, the devil is in the detail, we’re going to have to see how it works and how it’s going to be matched, are we going to be given a choice of who we get or just be allocated?
“At least it’s happening, it’s a start, and people want to help and this is one of the ways in which we can.”
