April 3, 2005

Tea, Bread and Cheese

Haaretz reports on memories of John Paul II, then Karol Wojtyla:
One survivor, Idit Tzirer, said that she was an emaciated 13-year-old in 1945. She had just been released from a Nazi labor camp and was sitting on a street corner in the snow, too weak to walk, when Wojtyla approached.

'Suddenly, he appeared, like an angel from heaven, when nobody else was taking any notice of me,' she said on Israel TV. 'He brought me a cup of hot tea and two huge slices of bread and cheese ... After a while he asked me if I wanted to get away from that place and I told him I wanted to get to Krakow, but I couldn't walk. So he hoisted me on his back, like a sack of flour, and carried me, four or five kilometers.'

A life, even of a world-historical figure, is perhaps best understood one human interaction at a time.

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Matthew 25:40.

Tea, bread and cheese. A true sacrament.

Another retelling of this story here. HT: Hugh Hewitt.

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