Maidenhead Rabbi offers spare rooms to Ukrainians, inspired by mother’s Kindertransport experience
'If it hadn't have happened, she wouldn't have lived... so it's the turn of my generation now to step up in this disaster.'
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
Rabbi Jonathan Romain has said his decision to offer two spare rooms at his home to Ukrainian refugees was partly inspired by his mother’s experience of fleeing the German Nazis.
In an interview with Sky News the Maidenhead rabbi revealed he was already preparing two rooms in the home he shares with his wife in Berkshire.
He said: “On a personal level my wife and I have children, they’ve all grown, up so we’ve got spare rooms. So we thought, 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.”
But the rabbi said he was also inspired by his mother’s childhood, saying he still treasures a picture of his mother, Gabriele Hertzberg, as a child growing up in Germany.
“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.”
He added: “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.”
Romain began working with his local community to find other families willing to offer rooms to Ukrainian refugees after Russia invaded the country last month.
He revealed he had been inundated with responses and has heard from more than 800 people right across the UK.
“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.
Asked about the government’s Homes For Ukraine plan whereby families who welcome refugees into their home for at least six months rent-free will receive a £350-a-month “thank you” from the government, Romain said: “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.”
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