Bai Fang Li

RESTORING FAITH IN HUMANITY

"Righteous Among the Nations": José Arturo Castellanos Contreras

He was El Salvador's equivalent of Oskar Schindler, a man who was given a chance to do something about the Holocaust - and took it.

Now, six decades after José Castellanos helped to save Jews by granting bogus nationality certificates, the story of the central American nation's consul general to Switzerland during the second world war has been rediscovered.

José and "Jorge" went on to prepare 13,000 fake Salvadoran citizenship papers that saved 40,000 Central European Jews.

The so-called "freedom papers" afforded protection against deportation to Nazi extermination camps and gave meaning to the name El Salvador, which means The Saviour.

In 2010 José Arturo Castellanos Contreras was recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem.

This Man Realizes He’s Sitting Beside the People He Rescued From Nazi Death Camps

Before World War II, 669 children who were destined for Nazi death camps were rescued and transported to England by Sir Nicholas Winton. Years later, they came together for a touching surprise tribute to their hero...

Finding Mike: Man searching for kind stranger who stopped him jumping off bridge

He Was About To Take His Own Life — Until A Man Stopped Him. Here He Meets Him Face To Face Again.

By Rossalyn Warren Curator: Rossalyn Warren

Jonny Benjamin was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder when he was 20 years old. He lost hope for a "normal" life and was about to commit suicide.
But thankfully, he was stopped by the kindness of a stranger.
Jonny — now a mental health campaigner — decided to track down the man who stopped him, "Mike," and launched a huge Internet campaign. In two weeks, the campaign went viral and Jonny found him.

Here is what the stranger had to say when he realized he was the man Jonny was looking for:
“I was so pleased to see how well Jonny was doing. I had thought about him over the years and had always hoped he was OK. When we met, it was clear how much that encounter on the bridge meant to Jonny. He told me it was a pivotal moment in his life — which was great to hear. I didn’t feel it was that big a deal. I did what anyone would do. I wasn’t trying to fix his problems that day, I just listened. I can honestly say, hand on heart, that Jonny is one of the nicest people I have ever met. He’s a great bloke and it’s brilliant to see him smiling again. We’ll definitely stay in touch.”
Jonny said:
“That day on the bridge, my life hit rock bottom. But meeting Neil, I felt so happy. It couldn’t be more of a contrast. It’s as though I’ve come full circle and that chapter of my life has now closed. He’s such a warm, genuine person — everyone should have a friend like Neil.”

Source HERE

Hutu Muslims saved Tutsis during Rwandan genocide

Rwanda has been marking the 15th anniversary of the country's genocide when according to the government 1.2 million people were killed, the UN says 800,000 died, most of those murdered were ethnic Tutsis.

Dead at 98: Heroic Irena Sendler, who helped save 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis

SOURCE HERE

A woman who risked her life saving 2,500 Jewish children from the gas chambers died yesterday aged 98.
Irena Sendler, a social worker, smuggled them out of the Warsaw Ghetto and gave them false identities.
She died at a Warsaw hospital after she had been in hospital for a month with pneumonia.

Mrs Sendler was serving as a social worker with the city's welfare department during World War II when she masterminded the risky rescue operations of Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Records show that her team of some 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps.
"A great person has died - a person with a great heart, with great organizational talents, a person who always stood on the side of the weak," Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, told TVN24 television.
Under the pretext of inspecting the ghetto's sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, Mrs Sendler and her assistants went inside in search of children who could be smuggled out and given a chance of survival by living as Catholics.
Babies and small children were smuggled out in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages.

More HERE.

Marl Twain On Kindness...

Actress Laurie Holden Helped Rescue 55 young girls

‘Walking Dead’ Actress Goes Undercover And Saves 55 Sex Slaves In Real Life

Source HERE

Here’s a pretty unbelievable story: Laurie Holden is an actress who plays Andrea on “The Walking Dead,” but she isn't just an actress.

Holden also works as a human rights activist with a group called Operation Underground Railroad.

It’s an organization run by an ex-CIA agent named Tim Ballard that works to take down unsavory human traffickers and the like.

So, Holden and the group went down to Colombia to try to take down a group of men who were trafficking in underage prostitutes. Ballard, Holden and co. ingratiated themselves into this group and set up an elaborate party in an effort to catch these men in the act.

The party was held at a massive mansion and the sex traffickers believed it was an event set up to facilitate the sale of these underage girls to interested parties.

A film crew as well as Colombian law enforcement were hiding out during the party.

Holden watched over the young girls as Ballard coerced the traffickers into making a faux transaction with him. Once that happened and was caught on tape, the police jumped out and arrested the guilty parties.

All in all, 55 young girls were rescued. And it’s in no small part to the work of Laurie Holden. Doesn't that beat any episode of TV you've seen lately?

A Real Clarence?

Life-saver: James Harrison has donated his rare blood nearly 1,000 times, saving 2 million lives!

More at 'Man with the golden arm' saves 2million babies in half a century of donating rare type of blood 

Scott Neeson, You Sir Are Awesome!

Scott Neeson, former head of 20th Century Fox International left Hollywood to save children rotting in Cambodia's garbage dumps

He sold his mansion, Porsche, and yacht to set off for Cambodia to provide food, shelter and education to destitute children. Scott now cares for more than 1,000 Cambodian children and their families.

You sir are awesome!

Harris Rosen, You Sir Are Awesome!

How A Woman's Kindness And Facebook Helped A Homeless Poet Find His Family And A New Start

Source: HERE

Raimundo Arruda Sobrinho writes beautiful poetry, but for almost 35 years only a few passersby in São Paulo, Brazil, got the chance to read his words.

That's because, for more than three decades, Sobrinho was homeless, according to Facebook. The social media site has produced Sobrinho's story in the video above as part of its "Facebook Stories" initiative.

In 2011, the homeless poet's life forever changed when he met a woman named Shalla Monteiro. Monteiro created a Facebook page so the world could experience Sobrinho's poems. To date, Sobrinho's page has almost 40,000 fans -- but one proved to be more important than the others: Sobrinho's brother.

In the video above, made early this year, you can hear Sobrinho's full story -- how he was reunited with his family and is on schedule to publish his poetry. You may need a box of tissues.



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I was the boy who saved thousands of lives by inspiring the Anthony Nolan

Source: HERE

Feb 12, 2014 19:15 By Warren Manger

As Anthony Nolan celebrates its 40th anniversary, Simon Bostic tells how an international hunt for a bone marrow donor to save his life led to the register which now boasts half a million potential donors.

Inspiration: Simon Bostic at Victoria Falls in Zambia
during a Comic Relief 2013 celebrity Zambezi challenge

It may seem incredible but Anthony Nolan, the charity which helps to organise the most selfless acts of giving, has just turned 40.

Thanks to the 500,000 volunteers now on its register , who are willing to donate their bone marrow to total strangers, one million stem cell ­transplants have been carried out worldwide, saving the lives of people with blood cancers.

The charity was the legacy of a little boy called Anthony Nolan, who had a rare condition called Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome and needed a bone marrow transplant. In a desperate bid to find a match, his mother Shirley set up the world’s first register.

But a little-known fact is that her ­incredible work was inspired by another small boy called Simon Bostic, who at the age of two had the first ever bone marrow ­transplant from an unrelated donor.

Simon should have died before his third birthday after being born with the same rare blood disease that killed his older brother Andrew. His only chance of survival was a transplant, but neither of his parents were a match.

Desperate not to lose another son, his mother Elisabeth pinned her hopes on finding a stranger who was willing to go under the knife to save her baby.

Relief: Simon with parents Elizabeth and Roge

She had enormous odds stacked against her – Simon’s tissue type was so rare, only one person in 50,000 would be a match. Worse still, no one had ever survived a bone marrow transplant from someone outside their family.

Yet the search spread around the globe and in 1973, after a donor had finally been found, Simon became the first person to survive the experimental operation.

The transplant not only saved Simon’s life, but also inspired Shirley Nolan. Like Simon, none of Anthony’s family was a match and in desperation Shirley contacted Simon’s mother Elisabeth for help.

Simon says: “Shirley came up against all kinds of barriers. There were lots of problems with funding because the success rates weren’t very high at that time.

“But my mother told her she had to keep fighting, she had to do whatever she could for Anthony. In that respect they were very similar, they were very determined women.”

That convinced Shirley to launch a register to collect tissue types that could find suitable matches for children like Anthony. Sadly she never found a donor for Anthony and he died in 1979 when he was eight.

Simon, now a charity operations manager from South London was the lucky one. He says: “At that point it was a certainty that children with my condition did not live past early ­childhood, so the fact I am still here is pretty miraculous.

“My mother was a strong woman and she did a lot of campaigning. She started by getting her friends tested. Then the local press wrote an article about it and the national press picked it up.

Lucky to be alive: Simon Bostic  

“It spiralled into a huge campaign, asking ‘Who can save this child?’ ­Thousands of people got their blood checked to see if they were a match. There were people in Australia, the United States and Europe coming forward.”

Simon was born with chronic ­granulomatous disorder, or CGD, which meant his bone marrow produced faulty white blood cells that could not fight bacterial infections. It meant any infection, however harmless to other children, could prove deadly to him.

Simon, now 42, says: “My brother Andrew died when he was two and a half years old. For a long time they didn’t know what was wrong with him, which was horrendous for my parents.

“When they finally diagnosed Andrew, they diagnosed me pretty much immediately. In that respect I was lucky. They diagnosed me before it was too late, unlike poor Andrew.

“My mother was absolutely paranoid about bacteria. When the transplant was about to take place, she wasn’t convinced the sterile conditions were adequate, so the night before she tore up the consent form.”

The search spanned several continents, but a donor was found near Simon’s Cambridge home. Joan ­McFarlane was a 28-year-old housewife just months older than Simon’s mother. She now has ­children and grandchildren of her own.

Simon says: “Joan was incredibly unfazed by the whole thing. She just did what she could to help and I think she was a bit ­embarrassed by all the attention.”

Friday April 13 1973 was Simon’s lucky day. Joan was admitted to Westminster Children’s Hospital, South West London, where surgeons took bone marrow from her hips and transplanted it into Simon’s blood. It was three weeks before they knew if the operation had worked. Meanwhile his parents could only watch and wait.

Legacy: Shirley Nolan with Anthony

Simon can even still remember the intense media interest in his story.

Simon says: “I have vivid memories of my time in hospital, seeing photographers with their cameras pressed against the glass. There was so much emotion around that some of it has stuck with me.

“As I left the hospital there were cameras and television crews everywhere. All the hospital staff were lined up outside and I was carried out in my father’s arms. It was an absolute hoo-ha.

“I had to go back regularly to check the donor cells were still there and for signs of infection. I hated that. We had to go down into the basement and I had dreadful veins, so it was always such a trial to get blood out of me.”

Sadly, when Simon was seven, tests found there were no donor cells left in
his body.

Simon says: “We were still in the Jurassic period for this kind of surgery. It was pioneering stuff. The transplant was a success and it saved my life, but ­eventually it ran out.

“It was a shock to everyone. I was in the same boat as before, except that antibiotic treatments had improved so they could look after me much better.”

The setback was too much for Simon’s mother Elisabeth. At that time Simon’s dad Richard was fighting lung cancer and would eventually win. Faced with that ordeal and the prospect of losing another son, she took an overdose. What was meant to be a cry for help killed her.

Simon says: “After Andrew died she shut that off and said, ‘I’m fine, let’s focus on Simon’. But she was ­devastated and never really got over it.

“She was the stormy, self-willed type and she coped first time around by throwing herself into campaigning. I think the mere hint of all that happening again was more than she could bear.”

Elisabeth may be gone but her steely determination has lived on in Simon. He decided not to have a second ­transplant, which could have involved searching for a new donor, as the transplant meant he now had an even rarer tissue type.

He preferred to take ­medication that would ward off ­infection, and took two types of antibiotic and anti-fungal drugs every day. As the risk of deadly infection returned, Simon was told not to take part in contact sports or swim in the sea.

But he insisted on being allowed to do gymnastics lessons so he could clamber on the climbing frames and tried to join in his friends’ games at every opportunity.

Over the years Simon developed slight fibrosis in his lungs and has been admitted to hospital periodically with a variety of infections. Just before his 18th birthday, the doctors discussed the idea of a second transplant again, but Simon refused. After graduating with from university with a degree in modern languages, Simon signed up to travel the world as a tour leader. His adventures have taken him trekking along the Great Wall Of China and tracking gorillas through the mountain forests of Uganda.

Simon says: “I’m a wildlife fanatic but I can’t go to the zoo as there’s a risk of infection from hay. I went to see the animals in their natural habitat.

Fighter: Like mother like son

“The doctors weren’t very happy about it, but I had my mother’s blood and I wasn’t going to be held back again by my health. I had been given a second chance and I wanted to live life to the full.” That attitude has served Simon well. He won a silver medal as one half of a Latin and ballroom dance ­partnership at the gay Olympic Games in Amsterdam in 1998.

His passion for dance also helped him to find love as he met his partner ­Christopher Barrons at a dance group. Simon is now head of operations at Charity Challenge, which ­organises ­fundraising expeditions for charities like Anthony Nolan. It is his way of giving something back to the charities that helped him so much.

He still takes antibiotics every day, but he is healthier than many others with CGD and, as many patients are now treated only with medication, he wonders if that is thanks to the ­transplant he had as a boy, .

Simon says: “I have always lived with the shadow of death hanging over me and even now I know there will be a time when I develop an infection and the doctors won’t be able to cure it.

“I’ve been through a lot of stress and trauma, but I’m grateful for the life I’ve been given because the chances of me surviving were negligible.”

Now helping publicise Anthony Nolan’s 40th anniversary Simon feels it is a real honour to be part of something so special.

Simon says: “Anthony Nolan’s work is so important. The fact we don’t need a worldwide appeal every time a child is born with leukaemia or something similar is wonderful. It offers people hope that they might not have had.”

3 Young Women Missing For 10 Years And Locked In House Freed By Awesome Good Samaritan

Amanda Berry, who bravely managed to take a life threatening risk to get help, Gina DeJesus, and Michele Knight, who disappeared years ago from their Cleveland, Ohio, neighborhoods, were found in a dramatic rescue earlier today by an amazing Good Samaritan neighbor, Charles Ramsey, whose interview is heartwarming and just ... wow. The most amazing and heartbreaking moment comes at 2:27. 
Source: HERE.

This Guy Was Shocked At The Amount Of Food His College Cafeteria Threw Away. So He Did Something.

At a time where fixes to America's biggest problems often seem too complex, littered with red tape and protocol, college students across the nation are mobilizing to help feed hungry people in the most commonsense way possible — saving leftover food that would otherwise be thrown away.
Source: HERE.

This guy saw a huge amount of senseless waste and wasn't very fond of it. So he found a way to use it and help a whole lot of people. It's a simple concept, and yet nobody was doing it. What a difference people can make.

Chuck Feeney

Girl’s mission to fulfill homeless Dalston man’s wish to return home to Jamaica raises over £4,000 in under a day

Jenny with Michael on Saturday night before she launched the crowd
funding campaign  to get him home to Jamaica.

Over £4,300 has been raised in just 24 hours to grant a homeless man his wish to make it back home to Jamaica, after a girl on a night out in Dalston was touched by his story – and now she needs to track him down to tell him the good news.

Jenny Baker’s selfless mission began on Saturday night when she got chatting to the 64-year-old man she only knows as “Michael”.He told her he had come over to England with his mum for “a better life”, but when she passed away he found himself homeless with no funds to support himself. Ms Baker, who lives in Rotherhithe, offered him some money. She said: “He didn’t want money or booze, he just said he loved a ginger beer, so I went and got him a ginger beer and a sandwich.

“He told me that all he wants more than anything in the world is to go back to Jamaica where he says he will be fine and happy again.”

She was so touched by his story she promised him he would be back in Jamaica this time next year, and that she would make it her “personal mission” to make it happen. Yesterday she put out a plea on internet crowd funding site, Go Fund Me, and within 19 hours the target of £800 for a flight to Jamaica had more than tripled, with donations coming from as far away as Canada, Cape Town and Dubai.

Ms Baker said: “He was honestly just a genuinely lovely, unassuming man. 

“He has no phone or anything so I am going to have to find him again - this all sounds crazy but I will do it.”

She now wants to use the extra money to help set up Michael in Jamaica and hopefully get him off the streets. Comments from some of the 356 people who have donated so far include: “Such a lovely story- restores my faith in humanity”, “This has made me cry”, and “Everyone needs help at some point! Michael is so lucky you found him, you truly are his angel.”

To add your support to the #getmichaelhome campaign, visit www.gofundme.com/6rb6f0.

Source: here