Simon May’s appearance at Swindon’s Festival of Literature on the 6th May posed some interesting questions to those of us watching on our comfortable sofa at home.
Simon’s book, How to be a Refugee – one family’s story of exile and belonging, told an extraordinary story of survival in the days of Hitler’s Nazi Germany and beyond. He pointed out that in today’s world of migration, although a refugee could, on the surface, integrate into a new country through social adaptation, did they actually assimilate, adapt their soul, shed who they really are?
In the book, Simon looked at his own family who had Jewish ancestry and lived in Germany, and wanted to portray an unknown side of life there. Even before Nazi Germany they had changed their religion to fit in with German culture and think themselves German first and Jews second. His grandfather converted from Judaism to Protestantism and Simon’s great uncle was a Catholic priest. This integration was of no avail when the Nazi Party looked at race not religion. Simon’s grandfather in 1933 was expelled from his profession as a lawyer because of his ancestry and died of a broken heart. His mother, Marianne, arrived in the UK in 1934 but later in England from 1938 to 1948, found being German was now a problem to be hidden. She was deemed a stateless enemy alien and subject to a night time curfew. This indeed saved her life when one evening she broke her curfew, was put into custody and later that night her home, where she should have been, was destroyed by a bomb.
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Festival Chronicle 