The story of Kindertransport, published in the Community section of the Butler Eagle, Sunday, Sept. 22, describing a Holocaust exhibit at Seneca Intermediate High School, gave me the chills.

Just prior to World War II, 1938 to 1940, Jewish parents, fearing the impending attempt by Nazis to annihilate them, arranged to send their children to Great Britain by train. They expected never to see them again. The exhibit captures “the intense emotions of family separation and the hope for survival” of the children.

My chills arose from my vivid memory and personal witness of just such intense parental separation to save their children.

It was not in the U.S. and not in Europe, but in West Africa 30 years after the Holocaust during the Nigeria/Biafra War. There was mass starvation of children, estimated to be about one million. No country stepped in to help.

Worldwide church groups organized a humanitarian airlift named Joint Church Aid. I worked as a volunteer cargo master flying by night into Biafra delivering food and medicine.

We flew by night to avoid the MiGs trying to shoot us down. We landed our four-engine cargo transports on a dark road.

After unloading, we sometimes took on a grim cargo: children at the edge of starvation. Their parents handed them to me, a stranger, to carry them far away in the sky with their only possible hope for survival. What a crushing thing for a parent to do.

I have no moral to this story. It just is.

David Koren, author of “Far Away in the Sky,” Sarver