A story of the migrants who built Britain
Artist and author Miriam Gold talks to Judy Cox about her new graphic memoir, Elena–A Hand Made Life, and how such histories can be used to defend refugees and migrants today
Miriam’s great grandparents, Sonia and Moshe Matskevich, who died in Auschwitz
By Judy Cox
Tuesday 19 November 2024
My grandmother was a refugee twice when she was still a teenager. She gave 40 years’ service to the NHS. She said the day the NHS was founded was the best day of her life, even better than giving birth to her own children.
That story has to be part of how we oppose the racist violence that happened over the summer. Refugees have made such a positive difference.
My grandfather was a Jewish refugee from Germany who fled to Britain. During the war he was classed as an “enemy alien” and the British government sent him to an internment camp in Canada then to the Isle of Wight.
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My grandmother was a refugee twice when she was still a teenager. She gave 40 years’ service to the NHS. She said the day the NHS was founded was the best day of her life, even better than giving birth to her own children.
That story has to be part of how we oppose the racist violence that happened over the summer. Refugees have made such a positive difference.
My grandfather was a Jewish refugee from Germany who fled to Britain. During the war he was classed as an “enemy alien” and the British government sent him to an internment camp in Canada then to the Isle of Wight.
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Imagine a government thinking it was a priority to send German Jews miles over the sea to Canada—what an incredible misuse of resources. We still dehumanise refugees by putting them on barges or sending them to Rwanda today.
When I started writing seriously, I stopped taking my family stories for granted. Part of growing up is starting to interrogate our family histories.
Our family histories are connected to where we find ourselves now, to how we talk about refugees and public services.
Since the book came out, it has been lovely to meet people who don’t have the same experience of seeking refuge still relating my book to their own grannies and their own memories. We know our families through their homes, their furniture, their curtains.
People recognise their grandparents’ homes in the book. The visual elements of the book help retrieve those memories. We all live our lives within our domestic concerns and wider social and political concerns.
There is often a shocking disconnect between the people I knew and the history they carried. I knew my grandparents as old people. It was difficult to think of some of the horrible things they went through when they were young.
My grandparents got married in 1941. My grandfather had been stripped of his German citizenship because he was Jewish.
But when my grandmother married him she became a German citizen and an “enemy alien”. It was labyrinthine.
My great grandparents could not escape from Germany because they had to settle debts. They fled to France and enjoyed a brief period of peace.
But they were living under the Vichy regime and a neighbour denounced them to the authorities. Early in 1944 they were sent to the Drancy internment camp then deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Both sides of my family have stories of internment, of dehumanisation. I have always felt aware that my existence is down to the wheels of fate.
My father was a Hungarian Jew. He was saved by Raoul Wallenberg, a man from a wealthy Swedish family who saved tens of thousands of Jews from Hungary.
People’s lives hung by the tiniest of threads. An administrative error could save your life.
I have always rejected a narrative that migrants come here and then move to the right, become self-made business owners and oppose other migrants being allowed in. I was brought up in an anti-racist family.
My grandmother lived in a working class area in Sheffield and then in Leigh, a coal and cotton town in Lancashire. She hated snobbery. She was a doctor who was absolutely committed to her patients. This was back when the system allowed you to get to know your patients.
Those relationships gave her a real sense of belonging. My grandparents lived in Sheffield, but they were not urban sophisticates. They loved walking in the Peak District.
This was the time of mass trespasses like the Kinder Scout Trespass. So you had two stateless, penniless young people, building a new life together, walking land whose ownership was being contested.
My grandmother’s Jewish identity was important to her, but she wore it lightly in terms of observance. Sometimes she went to the synagogue but not always. Towards the end, she was involved in a reform synagogue in Manchester.
Being Jewish was at the core of who she was. The importance of community is the thread that runs through the book. The Jewish community in Sheffield. The community of Leigh, which was a mining town and was so brutally attacked during the Miners’ Strike. And the community at her medical centre and, of course, her large family.
Now we have language around things like trauma, PTSD and survivors’ guilt. My grandmother had an abhorrence of sitting still and being quiet.
This helped her keep unhelpful reflections at bay. Keeping busy, knitting, crocheting, making everything by hand, it was her trauma response.
I have always been drawn to novels and graphic novels. The images do the storytelling. I came of age in a political area—in inner London, a multicultural area with Irish and South Asian communities.
It is exciting when people find new ways to tell their stories in music, in literature or film.
I think it so important to tell positive stories about refugees. We need a very different conversation about refugees and asylum seekers.
We need people to come and work, we need people. Today, people are recycling old arguments about refugees, which were not fit for purpose in the first place.
I am a teacher. I work in an area with huge levels of transient communities, from all over the world.
The language we are using now is like the language we were using about Jews then. Conversations about refugees and migrants are spiralling.
My memories of my grandmother remind of that phrase about the banality of evil.
My family story is a Jewish story, a Holocaust story. But it is also a story of one of the many migrants who built post-war Britain, the Windrush Generation, the people from Uganda, who all came and built our public services.
Imagine a government thinking it was a priority to send German Jews miles over the sea to Canada—what an incredible misuse of resources. We still dehumanise refugees by putting them on barges or sending them to Rwanda today.
When I started writing seriously, I stopped taking my family stories for granted. Part of growing up is starting to interrogate our family histories.
Our family histories are connected to where we find ourselves now, to how we talk about refugees and public services.
Since the book came out, it has been lovely to meet people who don’t have the same experience of seeking refuge still relating my book to their own grannies and their own memories. We know our families through their homes, their furniture, their curtains.
People recognise their grandparents’ homes in the book. The visual elements of the book help retrieve those memories. We all live our lives within our domestic concerns and wider social and political concerns.
There is often a shocking disconnect between the people I knew and the history they carried. I knew my grandparents as old people. It was difficult to think of some of the horrible things they went through when they were young.
My grandparents got married in 1941. My grandfather had been stripped of his German citizenship because he was Jewish.
But when my grandmother married him she became a German citizen and an “enemy alien”. It was labyrinthine.
My great grandparents could not escape from Germany because they had to settle debts. They fled to France and enjoyed a brief period of peace.
But they were living under the Vichy regime and a neighbour denounced them to the authorities. Early in 1944 they were sent to the Drancy internment camp then deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Both sides of my family have stories of internment, of dehumanisation. I have always felt aware that my existence is down to the wheels of fate.
My father was a Hungarian Jew. He was saved by Raoul Wallenberg, a man from a wealthy Swedish family who saved tens of thousands of Jews from Hungary.
People’s lives hung by the tiniest of threads. An administrative error could save your life.
I have always rejected a narrative that migrants come here and then move to the right, become self-made business owners and oppose other migrants being allowed in. I was brought up in an anti-racist family.
My grandmother lived in a working class area in Sheffield and then in Leigh, a coal and cotton town in Lancashire. She hated snobbery. She was a doctor who was absolutely committed to her patients. This was back when the system allowed you to get to know your patients.
Those relationships gave her a real sense of belonging. My grandparents lived in Sheffield, but they were not urban sophisticates. They loved walking in the Peak District.
This was the time of mass trespasses like the Kinder Scout Trespass. So you had two stateless, penniless young people, building a new life together, walking land whose ownership was being contested.
My grandmother’s Jewish identity was important to her, but she wore it lightly in terms of observance. Sometimes she went to the synagogue but not always. Towards the end, she was involved in a reform synagogue in Manchester.
Being Jewish was at the core of who she was. The importance of community is the thread that runs through the book. The Jewish community in Sheffield. The community of Leigh, which was a mining town and was so brutally attacked during the Miners’ Strike. And the community at her medical centre and, of course, her large family.
Now we have language around things like trauma, PTSD and survivors’ guilt. My grandmother had an abhorrence of sitting still and being quiet.
This helped her keep unhelpful reflections at bay. Keeping busy, knitting, crocheting, making everything by hand, it was her trauma response.
I have always been drawn to novels and graphic novels. The images do the storytelling. I came of age in a political area—in inner London, a multicultural area with Irish and South Asian communities.
It is exciting when people find new ways to tell their stories in music, in literature or film.
I think it so important to tell positive stories about refugees. We need a very different conversation about refugees and asylum seekers.
We need people to come and work, we need people. Today, people are recycling old arguments about refugees, which were not fit for purpose in the first place.
I am a teacher. I work in an area with huge levels of transient communities, from all over the world.
The language we are using now is like the language we were using about Jews then. Conversations about refugees and migrants are spiralling.
My memories of my grandmother remind of that phrase about the banality of evil.
My family story is a Jewish story, a Holocaust story. But it is also a story of one of the many migrants who built post-war Britain, the Windrush Generation, the people from Uganda, who all came and built our public services.
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