We often hear people suggesting that refugees could stop in safe countries between here and their homeland. My great grandparents, Jessie and Philip Gold, were Jewish refugees from Kyiv, Ukraine, and proof that the age-old argument about safe countries isn’t that simple.
Jessie was a firecracker, refusing to bow down to the establishment, to stand idly by whilst her people were persecuted. She stood up against injustice and attended anti-tsarist rallies in Russia. She rose up against the pogroms, took to the streets to decry what was happening and was punished severely for doing so. Imagine for a moment a Jewish woman front and centre, leading the resistance against the very thing that was designed to diminish her.
Resistance is dangerous
The situation she found herself in was dangerous. A bounty was put on her head and an arrest warrant was issued. She knew if she stayed, she would certainly face death: not a death behind closed doors and not a peaceful death either, but a public death in the town centre, to deter others from doing the same. Philip stood against injustice and persecution too, like Jessie. This put his life in danger.
They fled their home and all they had known in their 20s in the dead of night and came to Britain, landing at Tilbury Docks in the 1890s. The journey was dangerous, treacherous even, but they knew if they could just reach the UK, they would be safe from persecution and certain execution. Had they not done so, the two children in the photo would not exist and neither would my father. They risked their lives for safety and for freedom and to be able to exist as themselves without fear or favour.
What is a safe country for refugees?
Had they stopped off in another so-called safe country they would have been certainly murdered by the Nazis instead. They did not know that at the time, as these events happened some 40 years before the rise of Hitler and Nazi ideology. Nor was there any guarantee that the pogroms would not spread beyond the borders of the USSR. But we never know what is on the horizon, do we?
If they were fleeing today, the UK government would refuse them entry and send them to Rwanda instead, a country which, only a few years ago, was rightly criticised for their human rights records and their treatment of refugees.
My great grandparents were refugees, not migrants, as the press and certain politicians call them. They didn’t come here for money, they came because, had they not done so, they would have been rounded up and executed.
Family ties
The two young people in the photo are my grandmother Sarah and her brother Manny. They were born here because Jessie and Philip made it here to safety.
My other set of grandparents, also on my father’s side, have a similar story. They too fled the pogroms of the USSR originating in what is now Lithuania and Belarus and came to London for safety.
They all assimilated into British life. They had a family and settled. They contributed to society. The horrors of what they had once faced were gone and the nightmares gradually ceased.
Sarah Gold met and married my grandfather Rachmiel “Ralph” Goldstein. They had five children of whom four grew up to adulthood. Ralph ran a greengrocers in North London and rather ahead of her time, Sarah worked at the Savoy Theatre in the ticket booth.
My grandfather changed their surname from Goldstein to Gould, to sound more ‘English’. He kept his hair cut short and styled it in a fashion to hide the Jewish afro he had. He became ashamed of his Jewishness. The sheer idea that this was necessary is heartbreaking for me. Four of their children were born with the surname Goldstein and one, my father was born under the name Gould.
Contributions to the UK
My uncle ‘Bob’ became a professor, lecturer and reader at the London School of Economics. Upon his death an award was set up in his name, the J R (Bob) Gould Prize which is awarded every year for the best performance by a Department of Economics student in Economics.
My uncle Stanley went on to invent a dye for nylon. Auntie Fay married a Jewish man who became one of the first ever NHS GPs in the country. What she did as a career remains something of a mystery but she was fluent in multiple languages. My father, the youngest of the bunch, grew up to study economics, business studies and accountancy, having a very successful career in the public sector.
I am the great granddaughter of refugees, and I couldn’t be prouder to say so. I don’t recognise what this country has become. I once thought I was lucky to be born here, to be British, to be a part of the UK. Now I see we are becoming no better than the regime my great grandparents fled.
This country was built on and by refugees like my great grandparents. It is a melting pot of all cultures, faiths and backgrounds. On World Refugee Day (20 June) we should reflect on the journeys and sacrifices they have made along the way and celebrate our diversity.
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