Wednesday 16th September

People huddled together in the rain and cold waiting for a train.   They are here because of a War they had nothing to do with.  They have left their homes behind.  They have left almost all their possessions behind.  They have left many family members behind.  They have no idea if their life will be better in the camps or where they are.  Hostile Police are herding them onto trains, cramming them in, and these are the lucky ones.  Many more wait in the cold and the rain for other trains or are held back by angry Security forces.  They are bewildered and tired and unsure of their future.  They are scared, they have lost nearly everything and now their whole future is bound up with boarding that train.  It is the late nineteen-thirties, Jews are being shipped across the continent of Europe as their homes are bombed and bulldozed.  Whole communities are being ripped apart, centuries of security gone in an instant, the future uncertain.  The lucky few who have gained refugee status will have to rebuild their lives in foreign countries where people make it clear they are unwanted.

Fast forward eighty years and we are seeing the same bewildered faces on the children who have been bombed out of their homes, forced out of their country, separated from their families.  Their mothers, dressed from head to toe in black clothes look little different from the young Jewish mothers in the thirties.  People are scared, their country is at war, a war incidentally that we helped bring about. I never thought I would see this happening in Europe in my lifetime.  Let’s make sure it never happens again.