Homelands

Chitra Ramaswamy
Canongate

journalist Chitra Ramaswamy has documented her ‘unlikely’ friendship with Henry Wuga, a Jewish German man born in 1924, now in his 90s, who arrived in the UK by Kindertransport in 1939. Despite their differences, Ramaswamy, who first encountered Wuga in her work as a journalist, feels a strong pang of recognition as he recollects his immigrant experience.

Life wasn’t easy for a German teenager in World War II Britain. Placed at first with kind individuals, but later labelled a dangerous alien by the government, Wuga was interned for a time in camps alongside Nazi sympathisers holding the anti-semitic beliefs he’d fled his home to escape—a side to wartime Britain lesser acknowledged.

Meanwhile, events in the author’s own life—bringing up young children, facing the mortality of a parent—prompt her to reflect on lifetimes as the sweeping arcs that they are. She considers her parents’ experiences of emigrating from Bangalore to England, and what home means to her. ‘Ours is the classic immigrant conundrum: too Indian in Britain, too British in India. Our true home lies in this bewilderness.’ She reflects, ‘in the future I will start to undersand that belonging lies in the search.’

Belonging lies in the details, too, as Ramaswamy skillfully pulls out particularly poignant moments from the Wugas’ lives. There is a spectacular anecdote about young music-loving Henry, determined to attend a performance of his favourite opera—even if he happened to be a thirteen year old boy living in Nurumberg in 1937. ‘It was my fight against Hitler! It’s unusual, but that’s how it was.’ Just a couple of years later this spirited young man would receive letters from his widowed mother, hoping they’d be reunited one day.

I understand quickly why Ramaswamy became so fond of this sweet couple, who met at ‘the house on the hill’, a refugee centre on Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street, situated in a Georgian terrace since swallowed up by redevelopment. I enjoy reading about its ‘library, theatre group, meeting rooms and a canteen famous for its proper coffee and cheap meals,’ and how School of Art students would ‘drift over’ for a bowl of good soup. It’s where Henry would meet his wife Ingrid, and the two would fall in love.

Homelands is a wonderful tribute to a fascinating friendship and all the moments, big and small, that make up a life. In the depth of its empathy, it also demonstrates what humanity stands to gain from listening to the stories of refugees whose lives have been interrupted by the outbreak of war.

—Laura Waddell