Lord Dubs to cite Kindertransport journey in Easter message for Humanists

Peer and refugee rights campaigner Lord Alf Dubs is to tell how he fled the Nazis when he issues the secular Easter message to atheist and humanist prisoners in the UK on Friday.

Czech-born Dubs, who came to Britain on the Kindertransport, will tell the prisoners how he escaped the Holocaust when he addresses inmates via National Prison Radio on Good Friday in an initiative organised by Humanists UK.

The Labour peer shot to prominence in 2016 when he shamed the Conservative government for only taking several hundred unaccompanied children fleeing war in the Middle East, when there were millions at-risk in camps, where they remain today.

This week he said: “In my message I will remind the prisoners about how I escaped the Nazis and the Holocaust. And I will talk to them about the refugees today living in terrible conditions in the camps of Greece and northern France.

“There are parallels to be made and the message is that as a country we can give people like that hope. It is the same hope that we can also give to those who are incarcerated too.”

It has been difficult for humanist pastors to reach prisoners during the lockdown, he said, adding that the initiative was designed to “boost morale” and “hopefully make them feel that they are not completely alone”.

Dubs will read extracts of WH Auden’s 1939 poem Refugee Blues and has chosen the Irish ballad Danny Boy as his song to be played.