TWO weeks ago, at a dinner at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, I came into a restaurant and sat down opposite an elderly gentleman.

I didn’t recognise who he was until I looked up and saw the 93-year-old face of Lord Alf Dubbs. He was in Strasbourg for the Holocaust commemoration. His story is one of the most extraordinary of anyone I have ever met. Alfred Dubs was born in Prague in Czechoslovakia. His father was Jewish. In 1939 when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, his father fled to London. His mother’s application for permission to leave the country was refused by the Gestapo.

So, aged just six years old, Alf travelled on the Kindertransport in June 1939. He was one of 669 Czech children, mainly Jewish, saved by the British stockbroker Nicholas Winton from the Nazis on the Kindertransport between March and September 1939. He clearly remembers leaving the train station in Prague and not touching the food pack given to him by his mother for two days!

Alf said: ‘I remember the German invasion. I remember how German soldiers were everywhere. We had to tear a picture of the Czech President out of our schoolbooks when I was six years old and stick in a picture of Hitler. My Mother put me on a train. There were anxious parents everywhere, not knowing whether they'd ever see their children again. There were German soldiers in the background with swastikas.

‘The older ones knew what was going on. It was a long train journey on hardwood seats but you don't mind if you're a six year old. I didn't know anybody on the train. There were about two hundred of us, I think. And so we proceeded on the train to the Dutch border.

‘The older ones cheered because they were out of reach of the Nazis. We reached the Hook of Holland, then Harwich, and then to Liverpool Street, London, where we were met with our dog tags and were allocated to relatives, family or people who would foster us. If it hadn't been for the Kindertransport, I don't think I'd have survived the Holocaust, because I'm half Jewish myself.’

I found Alf’s story particularly pertinent in today’s climate. Reflecting on the politics of ‘othering’ – indiscriminately blaming people from another place for our societal malaise – stories like Alf’s remind us that this country has always been a safe haven or asylum for people fleeing persecution.

I explained to Alf where I came from. Quick as a flash he said: ‘ahhh Cornwall – don’t you have a housing problem with too many AirBnBs?’

We then had an in-depth discussion on the details of the Cornish housing crisis. It turns out that Alf is a member of the British and Irish Parliamentary Association and they are producing an important report on the impacts of short term lets on coastal areas.

Obviously, I invited Alf to Cornwall and it would be a very special honour if he came. A kinder, gentler, wiser man, you could not possibly meet.