My father, the child refugee, helped to change Britain. That’s why we need more compassion

‘The Kindertransport was the saving and the making of my father.’ Karel Reisz on the set of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in 1960. Photograph: Ronald Grant

When refugee crises occur, I think of my late father, Karel Reisz. A celebrated film-maker, he was someone who helped radically transform British cinema during the 1950s and 1960s.

But in early 1939, at the age of just 12, he left his family behind for ever and set off on the last Kindertransport from Prague – shortly before the Germans took over Czechoslovakia and closed the borders – and became a child refugee in the UK. His knowledge of English then was restricted to the name of the former prime minister, “good old Mr Baldwin”, and the remedy an uncle used for his stomach problems, “Carter’s little liver pills”.