Neil Gaiman: My family's Holocaust history led me to Syrian refugee camps
Renowned British Jewish author says most recent visit to camps in Jordan 'broke him in pieces', but he is determined to return.
Speaking to Yahoo News to mark World Refugee Day on Friday, Gaiman said that he drew a parallel between his family's experiences and those of the modern day refugees once he heard the stories of an elderly relative.
“I didn’t even know that the story of these camps was personal, until I started talking to my cousin Helen, who’s 96 this year. It was refugee camps that kept that whole side of my family alive,” Gaiman told Yahoo.
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Gaiman has visited the refugee camps in Jordan on two occasions - last time writing a moving piece about his experiences there. Now, he told Yahoo, his most recent visit "broke him in pieces", but he is determined to return.
“Talking to Helen, hearing her story, was one of those strange, huge, game-changing moments where you reconsider what you do and why you do it,” Gaiman told Yahoo.
He recounted the story of Helen, who would read in secret in the Warsaw Ghetto, so that she could pass on the stories to the children she taught there, and how it resonated with him, an established author.
“… in the Warsaw Ghetto, she used to teach little girls - under the guise, I believe, of sewing classes - storytelling.
“At that point, in that place, all books were illegal, and she got hold of a black market copy of Gone With The Wind in Polish translation. Every night, she would stay up late, reading it. And every morning, the girls would ask her what had happened in the part she had read that night. She couldn’t bring the book itself in, because that would have been too dangerous - it had to be kept out of sight. But every day, she risked her life to tell them stories.”
Together with fashion designer Georgina Chapman, the wife of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, Gaiman is working on a "storytelling project highlighting the Syrian refugee crisis."
