I remember being on the Kindertransport – my journey was easier than that faced by today’s refugees

It is a bitter irony that the 85th anniversary of the first Kindertransport should coincide with my most recent visit to the Calais camps, where I witnessed the shocking conditions endured by the refugees of today.

The Kindertransport saved the lives of many (mostly Jewish) refugee children by bringing them to safety in the UK. I was one of them.

Although, at six, I was one of the youngest children on the train, I remember the journey.

I remember my mother putting me on the train with a knapsack of food. I can still clearly see her in my mind, standing on the platform waving me off, surrounded by German soldiers in uniforms and swastikas. Of course, for many of the parents waving their children off that day, it was the last time they ever saw them.

We travelled in carriages of between six and eight. We had hard wooden seats to sit and sleep on. It was no great hardship for us – we were children and didn’t mind sleeping on the benches.

It took one day to get to the Dutch border and two days to get to Liverpool Street. I remember that the journey seemed interminably long to me, and that when we reached Holland, the older children on the train started cheering. I didn’t know why – I was looking out for windmills and wooden shoes. Only afterwards did I understand that they were cheering because we had reached safety from the Nazis.

From the border, the train took us to the Hook of Holland, and from there we took a boat to Harwich, and then came via train to Liverpool Street.

I remember that scene, too – we children all wore dog tags and were allocated families or foster parents. I was lucky; my father was waiting for me. When I got to London, he realised that I hadn’t touched the food my mother had packed for me two days before.

However difficult it was for me to watch my mother wave me off, my journey was easy compared to the journeys of asylum seekers today. Those I met in Calais included a six-year-old Syrian boy, the same age I was, fleeing war, just like me, surviving in appalling conditions, in sodden fields, in flimsy tents surrounded by stagnant pools of water and mud. Some of the children I met had nothing but flip-flops on their feet, inadequate clothing to keep them warm, little food and no sanitation.

My visit last week to Calais wasn’t my first, but the conditions I saw on this most recent journey were the worst I’ve seen, reflecting the most hostile environment towards refugees that I’ve witnessed in my memory.

In 1938 and 1939, Britain welcomed 10,000 unaccompanied refugee children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia on the Kindertransport. Contrast that with the situation facing child refugees wishing to reach safety in the UK today. With the exception of Ukrainians and people from Hong Kong, and a vanishingly small number from Afghanistan, there are no safe routes.

Britain has slammed its doors on these unfortunate victims of war. In so doing, the UK has created the perfect conditions for people-smugglers and traffickers to thrive, profiting as they now can from human misery and desperation. As we know, drownings in the Channel are not uncommon.

It is not illegal to claim asylum – something that needs repeating, if only to counter the cacophony of claims made by government ministers about what they term “illegal routes”. Indeed, the UNHCR, the custodian of the 1951 Refugee Convention, is clear that the journey taken cannot be used to deny an asylum claim.

Taking our fair share of asylum seekers, especially those with family or other ties to the UK, and working closely in collaboration with our European partners, is the only humane response to the conflicts raging in the world today.

The way we currently treat victims of war, persecution and torture is not only a betrayal of our international commitments under the Refugee Convention, which we signed having witnessed the terrible suffering of refugees during and after the Second World War. It is also a betrayal of the UK’s long-standing humanitarian traditions – and, of course, of the lives of those shivering in camps, awaiting a small boat which may or may not succeed in bringing them here safely.

Lord Dubs is a Labour peer, the former MP for Battersea, and a lifelong campaigner for refugees