Natasha Devon hits back at messages on refugee safe routes
31 December 2021, 15:54
'That's what makes me ashamed to be British - people like you.'
Natasha Devon said she couldn't believe messages from listeners on the topic of reopening safe routes to the UK for refugees, following a warning from surviving members of the Kindertransport.
Alf Dubs, Stephanie Shirley and Erich Reich, who arrived in the UK between 1938 and 1939 as child refugees on the Kindertransport, said the UK was losing its moral authority in the world.
Last month the Home Secretary has said there is "no quick fix" after 27 migrants including three children, seven women and 17 men died in a "floating death trap" which capsized in the Channel.
Among listeners' texts were statements such as "terrible things are happening all over the world with famine and global warming" and that it was "wrong to equate Jews escaping genocide with people trying to get into the UK as refugees".
"I can't believe what I'm reading," Natasha said.
"What none of you realise, is that this attitude was there in 1938 and 1939 when Jewish children were trying to come over to this country to escape genocide, people were calling them aliens, were saying that them coming to this country was illegal.
Ernest Simon's Kindertransport story
"You people who are sending those messages into the studio would've been in that group that would've turned away Jews fleeing the holocaust."
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Natasha concluded: "You can call me a lefty, virtue-signalling snowflake as much as you like. You are not going to change my mind on this.
"This is about basic compassion and empathy. We have the room, we have the money.
"That's what makes me ashamed to be British - people like you."
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