A heart warming story...........The girl with the rose.....................part one............ (10)

Whom do you Love? a lovely heartwarming story....

John Blanchard stood up from the bench, straightened his Army uniform, and studied the crowd of people making their way through Grand Central Station. He looked for the girl whose heart he knew, but whose face he didn't, the girl with the rose. His interest in her had begun thirteen months before in a Florida library. Taking a book off the shelf he found himself intrigued, not with the words of the book, but with the notes penciled in the margin. The soft handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and insightful mind.
In the front of the book, he discovered the previous owner's name, Miss Hollis Maynell. With time and effort he located her address. She lived in New York City. He wrote her a letter introducing himself and inviting her to correspond. The next day he was shipped overseas for service in World War II.

During the next year and one-month the two grew to know each other through the mail. Each letter was a seed falling on a fertile heart. A Romance was budding. Blanchard requested a photograph, but she refused. She felt that if he really cared, it wouldn't matter what she looked like.

When the day finally came for him to return from Europe, they scheduled their first meeting - 7:00 PM at the Grand Central Station in New York. "You'll recognize me," she wrote, "by the red rose I'll be wearing on my lapel." So at 7:00 he was in the station looking for a girl whose heart he loved, but whose face he'd never seen.

part two.................Fictional
« Thread Started on Apr 1, 2007, 12:19pm »

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Mr Blanchards reply to this ..........


I'll let Mr. Blanchard tell you what happened:
A young woman was coming toward me, her figure long and slim. Her blonde hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears; her eyes were blue as flowers. Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness, and in her pale green suit she was like springtime come alive. I started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was not wearing a rose.

As I moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips. "Going my way, sailor?" she murmured. Almost uncontrollably I made one step closer to her, and then I saw Hollis Maynell. She was standing almost directly behind the girl.

A woman well past 40, she had graying hair tucked under a worn hat. She was more than plump, her thick-ankled feet thrust into low-heeled shoes. The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away. I felt as though I was split in two, so keen was my desire to follow her, and yet so deep was my longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned me and upheld my own. And there she stood. Her pale, plump face was gentle and sensible, her gray eyes had a warm and kindly twinkle. I did not hesitate. My fingers gripped the small worn blue leather copy of the book that was to identify me to her.

This would not be love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even better than love, a friendship for which I had been and must ever be grateful.

I squared my shoulders and saluted and held out the book to the woman, even though while I spoke I felt choked by the bitterness of my disappointment. "I'm Lieutenant John Blanchard, and you must be Miss Maynell. I am so glad you could meet me; may I take you to dinner?"

The woman's face broadened into a tolerant smile. "I don't know what this is about, son," she answered, "but the young lady in the green suit who just went by, she begged me to wear this rose on my coat. And she said if you were to ask me out to dinner, I should go and tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of test!"

It's not difficult to understand and admire Miss Maynell's wisdom. The true nature of a heart is seen in its response to the unattractive.

Here is another one for you Hollandgirl. I remember watching this couple on the TV. The man would still cry when he talked about what she meant to him. This is a true story, saw it on a W5 special about couples that lived through the war. This couple were also on Oprah. Stephan Spielberg was working on a special project and this couple was on Oprah.
Funny how some might only see it as a young girl giving a young man an apple, but if you read with your heart, you will see what it meant to this young man in a concentration camp.

A Girl with an Apple


It’s rare that a chain letter arrives that I feel inclined to pass on, but “the girl with the apple” is an exception. I have not passed it on, I’m just going to blog it. Whether the story is true or not, I don’t know. Nevertheless it is worth telling…

A Girl with an Apple

August 1942. Piotrkow , Poland . The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women and children of Piotrkow’s Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square. Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated.

“Whatever you do,” Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, “don’t tell them your age. Say you’re sixteen.”

I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker. An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, then asked my age. ‘Sixteen,’ I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood. My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick and elderly people.

I whispered to Isidore, ‘Why?’

He didn’t answer. I ran to Mama’s side and said I wanted to stay with her.

“No,” she said sternly. “Get away. Don’t be a nuisance. Go with your brothers.”

She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.

My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany . We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers.

“Don’t call me Herman anymore.” I said to my brothers. “Call me 94983.”

I was put to work in the camp’s crematorium, loading the dead into a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number. Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald ’s sub-camps near Berlin .

One morning I thought I heard my mother’s voice, “Son,” she said softly but clearly, “I am going to send you an angel.” Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.

A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a litle girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree. I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in
German.

“Do you have something to eat?”

She didn’t understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat - a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple. We didn’t dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn’t know anything about her, just a kind farm girl, except that she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.

Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia. ‘Don’t return,’ I told the girl that day. ‘We’re leaving.’ I turned toward the barracks and didn’t look back, didn’t even say good-bye to the little girl whose name I’d never learned, the girl with the apples.

We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I’d survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.

But at 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too.

Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I’m not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person’s goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.

Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U. S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I’d opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.

One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me. “I’ve got a date. She’s got a Polish friend. Let’s double date.”

A blind date? Nah, that wasn’t for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma. I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn’t so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.

The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn’t remember having a better time.

We piled back into Sid’s car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, ‘Where were you,’ she asked softly, ‘during the war?’

“The camps,” I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget.

She nodded. ‘My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin,’ she told me. ‘My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.’ I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were, both survivors, in a new world.

“There was a camp next to the farm.’ Roma continued. ‘I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day.”

What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. “What did he look like?” I asked. He was tall, skinny, and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months.’

My heart was racing. I couldn’t believe it. This couldn’t be. ‘Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?’

Roma looked at me in amazement. “‘Yes, That was me!”

I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn’t believe it! My angel.

“I’m not letting you go.” I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn’t want to wait.

“You’re crazy!” she said.

But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week. There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I’d found her again, I could never let her go.

That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren I have never let her go.

Herman Rosenblat, Miami Beach, Florida

The chain letter ends with:

This is a true story and you can find out more by Googling Herman Rosenblat as he was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75. This story is being made into a movie called The Fence. This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people world-wide! Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world.

This is a great great story and yes it is a true story.
God works in mysterious ways.
Thanks for sharing kim

When this couple was shown on the W5 special, there was a couple from Holland. They were newly weds when put in a camp. At the risk of getting beaten and even killed, the husband found ways to let his wife know he loved her. One time he even shouted it to her at a great risk to his safety.

This was also a wonderful story, of strength and a strong love for the other person.

Each of the couples show cast in the show, really showed strength and what positive love for some one else was. I could not get over the ability of some of them being able to love after what they had gone through. Still brings tears to my eyes.

Would so many of us today have the strength these couples had, and the endurance to still love as strongly and cherish each other after all this time.

Sometimes I wonder if I could be as strong as them.

Somethings we will not know until we are confronted with it.