I was listening to the radio on Friday morning, and heard one of those stories that simply stops you in your tracks:
Thirty years after the Second World War had ended, a man was travelling with his wife on a train. They went to the buffet car to get something to drink. The woman serving them kept looking at the man and eventually said “I know your face. I’m sure. It’s you!”
Thirty years earlier, that man had been one of the first allied soldiers into the concentration camp at Belsen; the scene that greeted their arrival has long since been tragically and horrifically well documented. The soldier found a young girl, a bag of bones and barely alive. He picked her up, sat her down and gave her his last rations of chocolate. She smiled.
Thirty years later, she was serving that same unnamed face tea on a train rushing through the European countryside.
The story was relayed by the man’s son. I can only imagine the emotion of that extraordinary moment.
Nige' Ollis 