Jewish peer helping to save Christians

A Jewish peer is helping to fund a programme to rescue Christians suffering persecution in the Middle East.

Lord Weidenfeld, the co-founder of the publishing house Weidenfield and Nicolson, said he was providing assistance in order to repay the British Christians who gave him asylum from Nazi-occupied Austria.

 Talking to The Times, the 94-year-old said: “I had a debt to repay”, referring to the Plymouth Brethren who took him in after arriving in Britain in 1938 via the Kindertransport scheme, which evacuated some 10,000 Jewish children by train. Lord Weidenfeld said he hoped to ­replicate the work of Sir Nicholas Winton, who helped organise the trains and who died on 1 July aged 106.

Operation Safe Havens, set up by the Barnabas Fund, an interdenominational Christian aid agency, is seeking to rescue up to 2,000 Christian families in Syria and Iraq. 

The scheme has, however, been criticised by some for choosing only Christians for evacuation.

The first phase of the operation saw 150 Syrian Christians flown to Warsaw last Friday, to seek refuge in Poland.