Saved By A Stranger on BBC2 on Thursday reduced me to a blubbering wreck.
After a year of not being allowed to hug or kiss our friends and family, it seemed particularly poignant that terror attack victim Karl said that a simple hand touch saved him.
It’s also testament to how small acts of kindness can have a massive impact on others.
Anita Rani hosts the emotionally charged series which is about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events.
Each of them received an act of humanity from someone that had a profound effect – and in a Long Lost Family-esque twist, they want to find them.
The first person wanting to track down their saintly stranger was clinical psychologist Karl, who was on one of the trains hit by the 7/7 London bombings in 2005.
His account of what happened on that Tube carriage was harrowing. “There was a massive bang and it felt like we were coasting forever,” he said. “There was a moment of absolute silence… and then that’s when the screaming started.”
Fearing for his life and panicking in the pitch-black, smoke-filled carriage, Karl found himself being comforted by someone who heard him crying.
He said: “She held my hand and was just so calm and said, ‘We’re going to get out’. I really think she saved me.”
Having never spoken to a soul about his ordeal, Karl has suffered survivor’s guilt as well as shame for edging in front of that woman to get out.
When he finally met Susan, a woman with a story that matched, the shared experience was a tonic.
But it was the second story, about a family who escaped brutal civil war in Sarajevo, that led to one heck of an emotional reunion. Emina was just four years old when war broke out in her home country of Bosnia.
Her baby sister Edina, born with Down syndrome, needed urgent medical care and it was thanks to one woman – Dr Natasa Savic – that the family were placed on one of the very few buses taking medical evacuees out of the city.
Having escaped the “living hell” of Sarajevo, with bombs falling and snipers shooting, the family went on to start a new life in Birmingham.
But Anita and the team managed to track down the doctor who fought to get them out of Bosnia – and she flew to the UK to meet the family.
“I’m so glad they found me,” cried Natasa, who never knew what happened to the children she saved. “That was my mission, to help somebody.”
An inspiring series with tales of compassion to fill the heart.
