Weidenfeld Fund: we’ll pay for Syrian Christian kids

A fund set up by the late Lord Weidenfeld has offered to help pay to resettle 3,000 unaccompanied Christian refugee children from Syria.

In a letter to the prime minister, Fund president Lord Wolf offers “a financial contribution” to children from Christian minorities because Weidenfeld had himself been taken in by a British Christian family in 1938.

Viennese-born Weidenfeld, a publisher and philanthropist who died in January, set up the Fund in response to sectarian atrocities committed by Islamic State, and “in part as a debt of gratitude” to the family, said Wolf.

“It is our strong hope that the Fund’s contribution will demonstrate leadership and spur on others to make their own practical and financial contribution,” he said, noting that the Fund was backed by “prominent members” of the Jewish community in the UK.

The government belatedly agreed to accept 3,000 unaccompanied Syrian children after Prime Minister David Cameron finally accepted a revised amendment to the Immigration Bill put forward by Labour peer Lord Dubs, himself rescued on the Kindertransport.