Sabit Jakupovic arrived in the UK from Bosnia aged 25 in September 1992. After spending the previous 120 days in two different concentration camps – one of which was the infamous Omarska – he was taken directly to Hertford County Hospital. At six feet tall, it weighed just under seven stone.

“When we arrived, one of the nurses asked me with hand gestures if I wanted a bath, a shower or to eat,” he says, 30 years later. “I hadn’t showered for 120 days. Then I went out for a cigarette and that’s when it hit me, I was actually free.

“I felt the indulgence of complete strangers. We left so much injustice behind us but arrived at such kindness. You cannot describe it. We were very, very well received. The hospitality shown by the British, I don’t think you get anywhere else. No other country has such friendly people as Britain.

Violet Wilson was a teenager in Liverpool when her family took in a young woman fleeing Nazi Germany – 15-year-old Marianne Frey. She arrived via Kindertransport evacuation with little more than her parents’ canteen of cutlery, which she treasured.

“We weren’t well off, we were a working class family, not much money to rub off on,” recalls Violet, now 98, living on the Isle of Wight. “But my parents were proud to give help where it was needed. The experience has definitely enriched our lives. Marianne has become like a sister to me.

In Scotland, former miner and National Union of Miners activist Iain Chalmers cherishes similar memories of two Chilean families hosted by his community in Cowdenbeath and nearby Lochgelly, both in Fife.

“Before adopting both families, they were in concentration camps,” he says. “People welcomed them, they set up a Chilean welcoming committee. There was never any animosity. »

Now, in 2022, UK hosting is needed again. The Disasters Emergency Committee launched a Ukrainian humanitarian appeal yesterday, bringing together 13 leading UK charities to support those fleeing conflict.

Around 874,000 people have fled the Russian onslaught in Ukraine since the start of the war, according to a recent United Nations estimate.

The European commissioner for crisis management says they could be followed by 3.2 million additional people.

So far the UK response has been slow with temporary visa concessions for family members of Ukrainians already settled in the UK. Meanwhile, in the coming days, just when the world needs us most, Members of our Parliament will be asked to vote on the most vicious anti-refugee legislation ever proposed in the UK.

The Border Bill is not who we are. Britain has a long history of welcoming refugees.

In the 16th century, we welcomed Dutch Protestants. In the 17th century, Jewish people of Holland. In the 18th, French Protestants known as Huguenots and Roman Catholics after the 1789 Revolution. In the 19th, French dissidents and tens of thousands of Russian Jews fled the pogroms.

Over 250,000 Belgian refugees fled to the UK during World War I. Some 4,000 Basque refugee children arrived in 1937, fleeing General Franco.

Britain accepted Jewish refugees during World War II and 250,000 people from Poland. In 1956 we welcomed Hungarians, in 1972 Ugandan Asians, in the 1970s Chileans and Vietnamese, in the 1990s Bosnians and later Kosovars. We also supported South African exiles under the apartheid regime.

People continue to seek asylum here because of conflicts all over the world, from Somalia to Sri Lanka, and now from Ukraine to Afghanistan.

Over the years, we have learned a lot from the people who have come to join us – weaving and banking skills, doctors and nurses, friends and family members.

Yet, today, we welcome only 2% of refugees in the world. Under Home Secretary Priti Patel, Theresa May’s explicit ‘hostile environment’ has become something even more toxic. The Borders Bill threatens to criminalize refugees coming to the UK – just as the world needs us to open its arms.

The legislation threatens to tear up the Refugee Convention that Britain proudly signed in 1951, as well as the rights of the most vulnerable refugees. The Borders Bill will allow the government to arbitrarily strip people’s citizenship, erode the rights of asylum seekers and institutionalize systemic racism. This is why it has been denounced by hundreds of organizations, over 1,000 religious leaders and the United Nations.

A number of senior Tories, including David Davis and Dominic Grieve, wrote to the Prime Minister warning that the policy was “dangerous” and would see Britain “significantly breach its core international obligations”.

The Home Office says: ‘The Nationality and Borders Bill, which has already been backed by MPs, will bring about the most comprehensive reform in decades to protect the vulnerable and ensure the fairness of our asylum system. This bill reduces incentives for people to make dangerous crossings and introduces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for malicious smugglers.

Iain Chalmers, now 70 and still at Cowdenbeath, often thinks of his Chilean friends Juan and Jose. “José told me their door was kicked down at 3 a.m., his wife and children screaming, and he was sent to a concentration camp,” he says.

But then he smiles as he remembers how the Lochgelly Women’s Group held a small welcome event with tea and cake for Jose’s wife Maria. “We asked her if she would like a piece of cake that sounds like the word cat – gato – in Spanish and she was horrified and jumped back in her chair,” he explains.

Maria became a linchpin in the Lochgelly community, supporting striking miners. Jose, a pitman himself, also showed solidarity with the Scottish miners, joining them on the picket lines.

Ana Grout recalls Scottish miners paying for her ticket when she and her family escaped Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, although her family had settled in London. Her father, only 19, had been accused of leading a communist group and was imprisoned when she was nine months old.

He was tortured, including by electrocution, for three and a half years and twice escaped execution. His mother endured her own ordeal.

Now 49, Ana married a Scotsman and had four children. “We were one of the first families to come to London,” she recalls. “The Sugar Puffs were the first thing I ate. Every time my kids eat it, it takes me right back. Britain opened doors for us when our own country, our own people, closed them.

Sabit Jakupovic, 55, now works in social services but has never forgotten coming to the UK from ‘hell on earth’. He says: “Emotionally, physically and mentally, I was in a very bad state. It was 120 days of horror. Thirty years later, I still have flashbacks.

For Violet, growing up with Marianne changed her way of seeing the world. “When she arrived, Marianne’s mother was sending us cakes from Germany,” she says. “But that quickly stopped. She was sent to a concentration camp with Marianne’s sister, Baerbel, where they were gassed. We are pretty sure it was in Auschwitz.

Marianne’s father also died in a concentration camp.

Violet’s grandparents were Jewish refugees from Eastern European pogroms, who arrived in the UK in the 1880s. Hosting a child of Hitler was a way of passing on kindness.

In Liverpool, Violet and Marianne visited the beaches, balls and swimming pools. “I remember visiting Ainsdale Beach and sliding down the dunes with Marianne,” she says.

Marianne died in October 2021 in a care home in Bolton after living a full life, although Violet says she was always haunted by the Holocaust.

“The thing I’m most proud of when I think of Liverpool is that my grandparents were welcomed. In terms of what this country has done for refugees, it gives them opportunities. It has was the savior of my family and helped Marianne.

how to help

Make a donation:donation.dec.org.uk/ukraine-humanitarian-appeal

Opposing the anti-refugee bill:togetherwithrefugees.org.uk

Community sponsorship:sponsorrefugees.org