After attending the Refugee Stories exhibition at Kelvingrove, I was simultaneously frustrated and uplifted. My dismay can be summed up by the first interviewee, Henry Wuga, who fled from the Nazis in a Kindertransport in 1939 when he was 15, says: Nothing has changed.
Sincere words followed by action
People still don’t want refugees. How frustrating – especially when you consider that the terms ‘Nazis’ and the ‘Holocaust’ is bandied about to villain mere political parties and figures, or to undermine business regulation. This is particularly true in the United Sates, where I am from. But rarely, if ever, are those terms used as a way to say: Look, people really needed help then and people continue to need help now; let’s offer sanctuary – welcome people with open arms, and restore their hurt bodies and souls.
Refugees’ tenacity to carry on
When will the rhetoric of speeches and the intention of international agreements, such as the Declaration of Human Rights be followed with sincere actions? And when will the better angels of our nature overcome the fallen ones?
The answer, to me, to these frustrating and pleading question lies in what uplifted me about this exhibition: the sheer, unabashed tenacity of those interviewed – and of all asylum seekers and refugees who I have direct and indirect experience with. The tenacity to make it. To succeed. To flourish. And sometimes, to just carry on. Despite the hardship in fleeing their own countries and the discovery of more hardship in their receiving countries, they assume the responsibility to nurse their own wounds and become part of Scotland.
Inspirational courage shown by Refugees
To me, this is the definition of this Refugee Week’s theme: Courage. The quiet, cry-myself-to-sleep-but-tomorrow-is-a-new-day, type of courage. This is the type of courage that is, the often quoted Gandhisim, the change that needs to be seen in the world.
This inspirational piece will stay with me forever and one I heartily recommend that you see if you have a chance.
