‘I was there to save children’
“Is there anyone in our audience tonight who owes their life to Nicholas Winton?” asked the presenter of the popular BBC magazine program That’s Life.
Around the elderly man, sitting with his wife in the front row of the audience, more than 30 people got to their feet. The man stood to acknowledge them, wiping away tears.
It was 1988, some 50 years since young stockbroker Nicholas Winton found himself in Prague as the Nazis marched on Czechoslovakia and all around him Jewish parents desperately looked for a means of escape, if not for themselves then at least for their children.
Virtually single-handedly, Winton saved more than 650 of those children from almost certain death in the Holocaust. But he didn’t talk about it for decades, until his wife discovered documents in their attic that revealed the story and enabled those rescued to know and thank their saviour.
“There are all kinds of things you don’t talk about, even with your family,” Winton said later. “Everything that happened before the war actually didn’t feel important in the light of the war itself.”
Winton’s death Wednesday at the age of 106 brought tributes from leaders and Jewish groups in Britain, the Czech Republic and Israel.
“In a world plagued by evil and indifference, Winton dedicated himself to saving the innocent and the defenceless. His exceptional moral leadership serves as an example to all humanity,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday.
Returning to Britain, he found no one was working on how to get the children out, Winton approached the British government, and eventually got a promise that it would let the children in, provided he had a foster home for each, and upon payment of a guarantee — £50 per child.
He drew up lists of 6,000 suitable children, publishing their photographs to try to encourage British families to agree to take them. He arranged trains from Prague to the Netherlands and ferries to take the children across the North Sea.
Eight trains and one plane carried 669 children to Britain in the months before the outbreak of war.
“At the time, everybody said, ‘Isn’t it wonderful what you’ve done for the Jews? You saved all these Jewish people,’ ” Winton said. “When it was first said to me, it came almost as a revelation because I didn’t do it particularly for that reason. I was there to save children.”
The children from Prague were among 10,000 mostly Jewish children who made it to Britain on the Kindertransports (children’s transports). Few of them ever saw their parents again.
Winton’s operation was unique because he worked almost alone.
“Maybe a lot more could have been done, but much more time would have been needed, much more help would have been needed from other countries, much more money would have been needed, much more organization,” Winton later said.
He also acknowledged that not all the children who made it to Britain were well-treated in their foster homes, and some foster parents used them as cheap domestic servants. He also faced criticism in some quarters for placing Jewish children with Christian families.
“I wouldn’t claim that it was 100 per cent successful, but I would claim that everybody who came over was alive at the end of the war,” he said, quoted in the book Into the Arms of Strangers.
Among Winton saved were Canadian journalist Joe Schlesinger, U.S. scientist Ben Abeles and British director Karel Reisz.
Winton was knighted by the Queen in 2003 and also honoured in the Czech Republic. A statue of Winton stands at Prague’s central station — candles and flowers surrounded it on Thursday — and a statue commemorating the children of the Kindertransport is a popular sight at London’s Liverpool Street Station. He continued to attend Kindertransport events well beyond his 100th birthday.
Winton served in the Royal Air Force during the war and continued to support refugee organizations. After the war, he became involved in many charitable organizations, especially in his hometown of Maidenhead, west of London.
A keen fencer who lost his chance to compete at the Olympics when war broke out, Winton worked with his younger brother Bobby to found the Winton Cup, Britain’s main team fencing competition.
Winton’s wife died in 1999. He is survived by son Nicholas and daughter Barbara.