Search for our saviours

BBC2, 9pm THROUGH emotionally charged interviews, this powerful series tells the stories of ordinary people caught up in the biggest events in living memory.

Each of them received an act of exceptional kindness from someone who had a profound effect on their lives. Anita Rani meets these people who were ‘saved by a stranger’, all of whom are hoping to be reunited with their saviours.

Trainee clinical psychologist Karl recounts the harrowing ordeal of being a Tube passenger on one of the trains targeted by the 7/7 London bombings in 2005.

“I was in the same carriage where one of the bombs was detonated,” he says. “A lady held my hand while we were stuck in the carriage.

“And for the last 15 years I’ve been trying to find her.” In the seemingly endless moments after the bomb exploded, Karl tells how the mystery woman reached out to him in the pitch black, smoke-filled train as he feared he would die.

In another search, Anita meets Emina, an NHS researcher living in Nottingham.

Emina and her younger sister Edina, who has Down’s syndrome, were born in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which fell under siege during the brutal civil war in the 1990s. In desperate need of medical care and with no safe way to leave the city, Edina’s family were rescued by her doctor who fought to place them on a rare list for immediate medical evacuation. It was an act of humanity that enabled them to escape the horrors of their homeland and begin a new life in Birmingham.

Emina says: “It would probably be one of the most powerful moments in my life to meet the person I credit our survival to.”

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS Karl with Anita in search for woman who held his hand on bomb train