Les Trains de la vie

Kees Vanderheyden was 15 when, 3 years after World War II and the brutal German occupation of Holland, his mother took into their home near Amsterdam a skinny, hungry little girl from Austria. Traudi Berndl had arrived as part of a vast, inspiring project organized by visionary individuals in the Red Cross: over 5 years, 180 000 traumatized and undernourished children travelled by train from Germany, Austria and Hungary to stay with modest families in Western Europe, to recover their health and share a first symbolic step toward reconciliation.
60 years later, Kees, who had emigrated to Quebec with his family in his late teens, starts a search for the girl who had so memorably marked his youth. It takes him 5 years to find Traudi, now an old lady living in Vienna, and to begin a correspondence with her. Trains Of Life tells their story, against the backdrop of the extraordinary initiative that brought thousands of children together in the name of peace. Today Kees visits dozens of primary and secondary schools to tell the young people of today about his experience of war as a boy: in his story they discover what war means to the daily life of children and begin, with Kees, a conversation about the importance of peace