Refugee Week: the refugees in my family

It’s Refugee Week this week in the UK.

The theme for Refugee Week 2025 is “Community as a Superpower.” 'Community is the incredible everyday. Ordinary and extraordinary. Simple acts of shared generosity. Kindness multiplied to become an unstoppable force!'

I grew up with refugees all around me. Here are the refugees in my family...

My maternal grandfather had been a refugee not once but twice due to Balkan ethnic cleansing, the first time was when he was 11! But at age 30 he became a refugee for a third time when he fled a prison camp in communist Bulgaria in a daring daylight escape over the mountainous and deadly border into Greece in 1948. He eventually made his way to Australia via Italy, never to return to his homeland. The price he paid for his escape was leaving behind a wife and two infants, who he never saw again. They all suffered from government repression and lifelong mental anguish as a consequence of his life-saving act.

My maternal grandmother was a refugee at age 24 in 1949 in the aftermath of the Greek Civil War. Her husband, the black sheep of the family, had defied his pro-Monarchist family and joined the Communist Rebels as a sapper, but died from severe wounds after having unsuccessfully cleared a land mine. As the widow of a combatant on the losing side, after the Communists capitulated, my grandmother had no choice but to flee, leaving behind her two infant children as she set off to Australia to reunite with her father whom she hadn’t seen since she was 4 years old. A few years later, her children and mother came to live with her in Australia. Deemed a political refugee by the Greek authorities, my grandmother was officially banned from re-entering Greece, but she did return once to visit in 1987 during a rare amnesty.

My cousin, her husband and her children, one 2 years old and the other just 3 days old (!), were internally displaced persons, effectively refugees, during the war in Macedonia in 2001. After having returned home from hospital after giving birth to her daughter, my cousin found that the front line was within earshot of where she lived, so her family stuffed as much of their belongings into their small car, locked up their house and fled to my auntie’s (her mother’s) place 20 kms away. They were fortunate they could return home as few months later, a fate many refugees never get to experience.

Trust me, no one wants to be a refugee, and yes, there's nothing more that refugees would want than to return to their homes. But what if you can't return home because of war? What would you do if your life is at danger just because of your ethnicity, race, political views, sexuality or for just accidentally being in the wrong place at the wrong time? You'd flee and become a refugee too! So enough with the scapegoating of refugees. Enough said!