HUMANITARIAN HEROES
How Sir Nicholas Winton, a Quiet Hero, Secretly Saved the Lives of 669 Children
The story of a person who took extraordinary action to rescue vulnerable children — not for fame but because it was the right thing to do
Nicholas Winton, also known as the “British Schindler,” was a humanitarian who saved the lives of over 669 Czech Jewish children doomed to death in German-occupied Czechoslovakia during the Holocaust of World War 2.
Background
In 1938, Winton was a 29-year-old stockbroker living in London. Shortly before a Christmas skiing holiday in the Swiss Alps, his friend Martin Blake, working for the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, urged Nicholas to join him in Prague.
Blake said he desperately needed his help with Jewish welfare work.
When he arrived in Prague, Nicholas was horrified by the persecution of Jewish people under Nazi rule. After the Kristallnacht of 1938, when the Nazis destroyed Jewish stores, synagogues and homes, tens of thousands of German Jews fled to neighbouring Czechoslovakia.
Soon Hitler’s Nazis would occupy Czechoslovakia as well.
