The unlikely Schindler who saved my wife’s family

As I gaze at my four children on Christmas morning, clambering on to the bed with their stockings, I will think of one particular person to whom, in a roundabout way, they owe their lives. He was a colonel in the first world war and, had it not been for his generosity, my children, their mother, her brothers and sisters, their children, their aunts, uncles and cousins — the entire Bondy clan, in fact — would not exist.

The story begins in 1918, as the conflict was nearing its end. Karel Bondy, my wife’s paternal grandfather, was a young Czech officer in the Austro-Hungarian army who had miraculously survived heavy fighting in Albania. He was on his way back to barracks from the front line one evening when he encountered a drunk German colonel, slumped in the saddle of his horse. Karel did the decent thing and asked the officer if he could be of any assistance.