In the winter of 1938 , Englishman Nicholas Winton was preparing for a snowy, fun-filled vacation to Switzerland when his friend, Martin Blake, sent him a letter with a vague, but intriguing invitation:
“I have a most interesting assignment and I need your help. Don’t bother bringing your skis.”
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It would be that very letter and that very invitation that ultimately turned Winton, an otherwise unextraordinary stockbroker, into a socialist hero, credited with saving the lives of 669 Jewish children during the Holocaust.
If you’ve never heard of him before, it’s not surprising, considering his reluctance for recognition and refusal to call himself “heroic”.
Known as the “British Schindler”, Winton was of German-Jewish descent, but was raised a Christian. Up until 1938, his family name was Wertheim, but this was quickly changed in order to establish the clan’s loyalty in a pre-war Europe.
As History Extra reported, Winton ultimately accepted the intriguing invitation sent to him by his friend, Blake, and traveled to Prague where he came face to face with the harsh reality for Jewish people in what was in the process of becoming German-occupied Sudetenland.
There, he witnessed families being forced to evacuate their homes and live in terrible conditions inside over-crowded refugee camps.
Shocked by this sight, Winton was overcome with an immense desire to help these refugees flee the Nazis, especially the children who he feared for the most.
In order to do so, Winton joined forces with Trevor Chadwick and Doreen Warriner, two other individuals in Prague ready to do whatever possible to help save as many people as they could.
Winton used his contacts in Britain to help choreograph a dangerous escape, one which began with him compiling a list of families who wanted to send their children somewhere safe, somewhere like England.
Transportation was risky, and organizing the children’s escape required a lot of careful planning.
As the BBC reported, Winton was only granted permission from the British government to let vulnerable children enter the country if he adhered to several strict conditions. These included setting up a foster family for every Czechoslovakian child.
In order to do so, Winton had to persuade complete strangers to open their homes to refugees, and so he put out an ad in newspapers begging for volunteers. Fortunately, many families were ready and willing to help.
Between March and August 1939, a total of eight trains departed from Warsaw, traveling through the heart of Nazi Germany.
In the end, those trains transported a total of 669 children from dangerous war conditions to the safety of England, where they were placed into homes and later hostels before permanent families were found for them.
Many of those children’s own families ultimately died in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
For years, Winton remained quiet about the hundreds upon hundreds of lives he managed to save.
In fact, it wasn’t until 50 years later that the full story of his heroic rescue finally came to light after his wife discovered a scrapbook in their attic, documenting the names of the 669 rescued children.
As BBC reported, the pair later appeared on an episode of the broadcasting station’s program, “That’s Life” in 1988, where, unbeknownst to Winton, some of the very people he rescued had been invited to appear in the audience.
Winton believed he was only an audience member on the show, and was therefore confused when the cameras suddenly turned on him.
His scrapbook was shown and his achievements were explained, and then program host Esther Rantzen asked the rest of the audience to stand if anyone in attendance owed their life to Winton.
More than two dozen people got to their feet, surrounding Winton, and applauded him.
So why did this hero decide to keep the truth about his incredible rescue to himself for half a century?
In an interview with British diplomat Sir Simon McDonald years later, he finally revealed the reason why he kept so tight-lipped about his heroic efforts:
“Because of the memory of those I didn’t save.”
In 2003, Winton was officially knighted in recognition of his efforts and his incredible rescue.
On July 1, 2015, at the age of 106, he died in his sleep, exactly 76 years to the day after one of his eight life-changing trains left a station in Prague.
Those 669 children that he saved have gone on to have children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
As one of those very children, Vera Diamant, told History Extra ,”That means there are well over 5,000 of us alive today thanks to him. He is the father of the biggest family in the world.”
h/t: BBC , BBC , History Extra
