Margaret Hodge on UK’s response

‘Pathetic’

Dame Margaret Hodge, whose parents were Jewish refugees, tells Lee Harpin the UK must be ‘more generous’ to Ukrainians

Dame Margaret Hodge has recalled the ‘battle’ to allow Jews escaping from the German Nazis to enter this country as she called for the government to be far more generous in granting visas to refugees now escaping war-raged Ukraine.

Speaking to Jewish News, the Labour MP described it as “pathetic” that by Tuesday only 300 visas had been granted to Ukrainians attempting to escape Russian bombardment.

Hodge, the Jewish Labour Movement’s parliamentary chair who was born to Jewish refugee parents, said: “Women, kids, older people clambering over rivers and trying to escape the bombing – I think you have got to put an arm out and welcome them.

“So often with this government, it is saying it is going to do something, and then it doesn’t do it in practice. We are up from 50 visas granted to 300, but with the number of Ukraininans saying they want to come here, it is still pathetic.”

The 78-year-old parliamentarian admitted that she could not help but recall the situation in the 1930s, as Jews attempted to escape persecution from Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime with the same reluctance of the British government to “be generous now”.

She said: “We always do too little too late. To be honest, when the Jews were escaping from Germany we didn’t open our arms. Before 1939, it wasn’t easy to get in. Even with the Kindertransport, it was a battle to let those kids in. We need to be more generous now.”

Hodge, who says she will always think of herself as an “immigrant”, is quick to clarify that her own parents, who had left Germany in the 1930s to move to Egypt, and had again left fearing persecution in Cairo in 1948 after the creation of the state of Israel, were not escaping actual war as the Ukrainian refugees are now.

But she adds: “If we hadn’t come here what would have happened? We were turned down by America, Australia and Canada. The Brits were the fi rst to eventually say yes to us. I still remember how proud my late father was when he received an MBE in 1978. That was a symbol to him that at last we were accepted into this country.

“We should do much more to help with the situation now. We are big enough, we are wealthy enough – we should be generous enough to understand.”

Hodge dismissed as “paranoia” the fears that the UK could become overwhelmed with those wishing to settle here from Ukraine. She said this would not materialise “partly, I think, because we have now got a reputation for being a hostile environment for immigrants”.

But she added that most Ukranians would want to be where “friends and relatives are going to be” and would “want to be close to their country to go back if it ever becomes safe enough to return”.

The MP said the Home O ce should now set out to be “as generous as we can be” and recognise that any Ukrainian leaving the country “at this point is escaping violence and confl ict in their lives”.

She added: “There should not be a question mark around that, once you have obviously established someone’s identity.”

But Hodge refused to join those who have been attacking home secretary Priti Patel over the slow process for letting in refugees.

“Having talked to her yesterday, I think she is really trying,” she said. “I just don’t think she can deliver it.”

The outspoken MP said that “after over a decade of cuts, they have really hollowed up the ability of the civil service to do anything”.

She continued: “They have destroyed the machinery of government they need to deliver policies. That goes for the Home O ce, immigration authorities, the people who are sanctioning Russians. Why are we behind all of the time?”

Hodge also told how she was “appalled” that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had repeatedly resorted to claims that he was attempting a “de-Nazifi cation” of Ukraine with his war and that he had attempted to suggest Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky , who is Jewish, was at the helm of a “Nazi” army.

“It’s cynical and sickening,” she said. “He is exploiting what must always be seen as one of the biggest human tragedies in the history of the world. Putin is exploiting that to justify a terrible war.”

Hodge, who heads the crossparty MPs group against corruption, has long called for the UK government to address the scourge of economic crime, and had warned in the Commons that the country was now “the jurisdiction of choice for a lot of dirty money”.

Back in 2018, writing for The Guardian, she called for a “ clamp down on Russian use of Britain as a safe haven for illegal wealth”.

She added: “Britain has become the jurisdiction of choice for kleptocrats, crooks and money launderers – including Russians – because of our weak regulatory framework, shrouded in secrecy and very lightly policed.”

In the Commons last month, she greeted prime minister Boris Johnson’s announcement of sanctions against those oligarchs residing in this country with links to Putin’s regime by telling MPs the new sanctions regime against Russia is fl awed. She reasoned: “Too many of the kleptocrats that have stolen from the Russian people and support Putin will escape the net.”

She now describes the government’s Economic Crime Bill, designed to tackle “dirty money” hidden in the UK after calls to clamp down on Russian oligarchs amid the ongoing confl ict in Ukraine, as “still not fi t for purpose”.

On Monday evening MPs voted down by a majority of 74 a cross-party amendment proposed by Hodge, which would have required the minister to publish a report on the funding of enforcement agencies in connection with the reforms to “unexplained wealth orders”.

WE ALWAYS DO TOO LITTLE TOO LATE. WHY ARE WE BEHIND ALL THE TIME?

A visibly fearful mother with her two young children awaits an evacuation train in the city of Zaporizhzhia, south-eastern Ukraine

Students fly out for refugee kids

by Michael Daventry mike@jewishnews.co.uk @michaeldaventry

A group of Jewish students have appealed for Lego, puzzles and manpower to help lift up the spirits of Ukrainian refugee children who have made it across the border into Poland.

The eight university students, led by Rabbi Aharon Lemberger, a university chaplain from Scotland, have started volunteering and playing games with the children.

They also want any student who might not have money or equipment to spare, but do have time and energy, to join them.

The initiative is being coordinated by the University Jewish Chaplaincy.

Lemberger told Jewish News: “Tuesday was the fi rst day we really worked with the children and the main response is: ‘Please come, this is amazing.’ The kids didn’t want us to go.

“As we were leaving a kid just came and hugged me, just because I was wearing the same blue shirt as all the amazing students who were with her all the time.”

Nadia Goldman, a student from Birmingham, said it was clear that the confl ict had been especially tough on the children.

“These people had to get up and leave without anything. That’s why we’re here – to try to lift up their spirits, put a smile on their faces.”

Isaac Bencomo, who studies at the London School of Economics, said: “These kids are coming from a traumatic experience and it is very, very important to keep them entertained [and] distracted. So anything from Lego, to face paints to any kind of toys are essential to keep them busy and distracted from the situation.”

The delegation has set up an Instagram account under the handle @ujc. ukraine.delegation to help promote its work.

Jewish students, above right, led by Rabbi Aharon Lemberger play with Ukrainian refugee children in Poland

“We encourage students: if you have the time, if you have the will, to follow our Instagram, follow our posts and, if we have more delegations, please join,” Lemberger said. Goldman added: “It’s really important for everyone to understand the trauma that’s going on here. Coming here has been an incredible experience. The children were thanking us and the parents were so grateful that they could go o and make the calls they needed to make. If you’re able to get out here, I really, really encourage you to do so.”

YOUTHS TELL ISRAELIS OF LIFE UNDER FIRE

In 2019, a Ukrainian leadership academy youth delegation came to Israel to meet a group of their Jewish peers and learn from Jewish families near the Gaza border what it was like to live under incoming rocket fi re, writes Stephen Oryszczuk.

This week, as the two groups met again via the Zoom online platform, it was the Ukrainians who were left to describe life in a war zone, with Russian soldiers shelling towns, destroying homes and shooting fl eeing civilians.

The groups were brought together once again by the non-governmental organisation ISRAEL-is, with whom Jewish News partnered for the fi lm Finding Abraham.

Addressing the group of around 50 young Israelis and Ukrainians, the renowned former Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky said Moscow’s war was a serious mistake.

“For the next 1,000 years, Russia will have to deal with this,” said the Ukraineborn former head of the Jewish Agency,

A pro-Ukrainian protester in tears

adding that Moscow would struggle to “restore their self-respect as a place among the nations”.

To the young Ukrainians, he said: “At this moment, you are showing what it means when people rediscover their identity, when people feel themselves very deeply connected, passionate, to their history, to the people, to their land. We will pray for you and help you. If we think our governments don’t help enough, we’ll continue lobbying to make sure that support of your struggle – which is so important for all of us – will be victorious.”

Israeli organiser Matan Dansker said the meeting was about sending messages to one another and determining ways to cooperate. “When we see what’s happening in your country, the fi rst thing that we want to do is to listen,” he said.

Some Ukrainian participants, such as Anya Skakynova, joined the call from the safety of other European countries, but others, such as those from the battered city of Mykolaiv, joined from underground bomb shelters.

Speaking from the western Ukrainian city of Lviv after having been evacuated, Andrij Marushchak said participants from the Ukrainian Leadership Academy “represent all regions” of the besieged country.

ISRAEL-is co-founder Eyal Biram said: “You’re not alone in this fi ght. This is a fi ght for democracy. This is a fi ght for a free world and mostly this is a fi ght for young people who want to build a better future.”

MP praises charity push

Labour MP Christian Wakeford has praised the “vital” work being done by World Jewish Relief in raising funds for those a ected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The charity has so far raised more than £3 million.

Speaking in the Commons last Wednesday, the Bury South MP said: “World Jewish Relief and many other community groups are raising vital funds for those in Ukraine and those who have already fl ed Ukraine, and I put on the record my thanks to them.

“As someone of Ukrainian heritage, this is an incredibly challenging time. My family over there are still there, but I know that they are safe; the region they live in has not yet been attacked.”

Wakeford also recalled how he had attended a European Jewish Association delegation to Kyiv to visit Babyn Yar just fi ve weeks ago.

He told MPs: “Yesterday a Russian bomb exploded at Babyn Yar, the largest mass grave from the holocaust, where 33,000 Jews were killed one by one in a two-day period and where 100,000 people were ultimately buried. Just fi ve weeks later, the site where I lit a candle in remembrance has been attacked.

“Ukrainians I spoke to on the street had a growing feeling of anxiety, of not knowing what was coming, while we all expected the worst.

“That has now been realised and they have been attacked. They have been invaded, and it is right that the world supports them.”