With the Queen rationing her appearances during her platinum jubilee celebrations, every moment of her presence felt increasingly precious. Her advanced age and decreased mobility forced her out of the public view for most of the long weekend, causing royal watchers to seek deeper meaning in every moment she was able to be there.
None more so than the short film at the start of the celebratory pop concert outside Buckingham Palace. She could have delivered a Christmas speech style piece to camera, reading pre-prepared words of thanks to the nation; we would have been satisfied with that.
Instead, we were treated to a heart-warming sketch in which the monarch had an intimate tea with one of the nation’s most beloved children’s fictional characters, Paddington Bear.
The Queen’s decision to appear with Paddington wasn’t just a charming moment of connection with younger Britons, though it did transform her in all our minds into the nation’s grandmother and introduced her to an entire generation who now know not too much about her except that she has a penchant for marmalade sandwiches.
For me, another important aspect of the Paddington film was its broader message: the story of Paddington was inspired by the Kindertransport, the Jewish refugee children who came to Great Britain in World War Two.
Michael Bond, who wrote the Paddington Bear books, said during his life that he saw the Jewish children arriving at Reading railway station with little paper tags tied to them with their names on. He told the Telegraph in 2014: “I remember their labels round their necks and then I remember going to the cinema and seeing on the newsreel that Hitler had moved into some new country and seeing footage of elderly people pushing prams with all their belongings in them. Refugees are the saddest sight, I still think that.”
What Bond witnessed was the humanitarian effort to rescue nearly 10,000 children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig.
After the Nazis came to power in 1933 Jews were routinely persecuted. After at least 91 Jews were killed and 30,000 people were taken to concentration camps on Kristallnacht in November 1938, the British Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare agreed to speed up the immigration process for Jews fleeing Germany. He agreed to issue permits to travel for lists of people, instead of for specific individuals. But while the Jewish children were to be admitted to the UK, there were strict conditions: Jewish and non-Jewish organisations had to ensure the children would not become a financial burden on the state, and sponsor their return. And these child refugees all arrived without their desperate parents, most of whom were later murdered by the Nazis having sent their children to a foreign country alone to be cared for by strangers. So while Britain has much to be proud of in providing for them, it could of course have done far more to save lives, and in a far more humane way.
Foster homes were found for the children who, it was assumed, would one day return to their countries. But after the war ended, many remained in Britain, while others emigrated to the newly re-born state of Israel. Some went to America, Canada or Australia. Most had been orphaned, losing their families who had not been able to join them in the UK.
Sir David Attenborough held a reunion in July 2019 for the descendants of his ‘sisters’ from Berlin, Irene and Helga Bejach, who his family hosted after they fled Nazi Germany through the Kindertransport. The two girls arrived in the UK shortly before the outbreak of war. Their father was the head of public health for a Berlin district and was killed in Auschwitz in 1944, while their mother died of tuberculosis. Their sister, Jutta was not allowed to join them because of her age. The Bejachs stayed with the Attenboroughs for seven years, before leaving in 1946 to join their uncle in New York.
Attenborough told The Times that he felt inhibited about revealing the story, “because it’s nothing to do with me — it’s a credit to my parents.” Such was the generosity of those who took in unknown children and protected them.
So by celebrating the bear from ‘darkest Peru’ who was adopted by Britons when he was found in a railway station wearing a tag which read “please look after this bear”, the Queen has subtly alluded to a moment in British history worthy of emulation. Through her choice of Paddington Bear as her jubilee co-star, maybe she sought to remind us of the importance of welcoming and caring for refugees, at a time when the issue is once again one of public debate.
In recent years, large numbers have been fleeing war zones, seeking refuge in the UK. Many Britons this year have been welcoming of Ukrainian refugees as they have fled the Russian invasion. And much has been made of the government’s policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda rather than settling them in the UK.
The Queen usually avoids politics, so perhaps a comic sketch with Paddington is as close as she might get to commenting on any of the current debates about refugees. But for this proud Briton, whose own father was sheltered by strangers elsewhere from deportation and death at the hands of the Nazis, her kind smile at that scruffy bear gave me a sense of pride in how our country has acted in the past to shelter those in need, and hope that we will continue to do so in the future.
