Homelands – The History of a Friendship by Chitra Ramaswamy

Perhaps best known for her unsparing and often amusing restaurant reviews for The Times Scotland and her work on BBC Radio Scotland, Ramaswamy has written something very different.

Homelands is about two unlikely friends.

One born in 1970s Britain to Indian immigrant parents, the other arrived from Nazi Germany in 1939, fleeing persecution.

Ramaswamy found she had much in common with Henry Wuga, founder of the largest Jewish catering company in Glasgow and the result is a moving, reflective and gripping story.

Homelands by Chitra Ramaswamy

The unlikely pair first met in 2011 when the journalist's editor sent her to interview Henry and his wife in the run-up to Refugee Week and they have remained close friends ever since.

It is a story of migration, anti-Semitism, racism, family, belonging, grief and resilience.

Last week, Ramaswamy took time from her busy schedule to tell us about her remarkable book.

She said: “I’m really looking forward to the Borders Book Festival. I’ve never been before but I know the Scottish Borders well and was recently in Melrose reviewing a restaurant.

“Homeland is a mixture of biography and memoirs of my friendship with Henry a 98-year-old German / Jewish refugee who now stays in Giffnock with his wife Ingrid.

“I was sent to interview them in 2011 and loved everything about them, they way they carried themselves, elegant, warm with so much love of life.

“We discussed some of the greatest atrocities of humankind, the holocaust, but the room was filled with laughter.

“I continued to interview Henry over the years and realised that I wanted to do more that write a few features. I wanted to write his biography, from 1920s Nuremberg to becoming a man in his 90s living through a global pandemic.

“So it’s a story of our unconventional and inter-generational friendship and how a middle-aged British / Indian woman became his friend. It’s about resilience and building bridges.

“It’s the most ambitious thing I have done in my 20-years as a journalist. I've now interviewed Henry dozens of times and amassed tens of thousands of words. He has a big archive and keeps everything, documents, photos and letters from his mum who actually survived the war.

“Henry arrived in the UK as a 15-year-old and was sent to Glasgow but he was summoned to a War Time Tribunal at Edinburgh High Court because he had been sending letters to his parents via an uncle in Brussels. He was deemed a Dangerous Enemy Alien and spent time at six internment camps including the worst one of al in the Isle of Man.

“But Henry is not bitter about how he was treated. He has so much empathy and humanity and sees all sides of everything. When I asked him about it he just shrugged and said that people were paranoid and scared at the time.

“After the war he worked as a chef before starting his own Kosher catering company. He is a well known character amongst the Jewish community in Glasgow.”

Chitra Ramaswamy will appear at the Borders Book Festival on Saturday, June 18 at 3.15pm. Visit: bordersbookfestival.org/