Person:Nicholas Winton (1)

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About Nicholas Winton

From wikipedia.com

Sir Nicholas George Winton MBE (born Wertheim; 19 May 1909 – 1 July 2015) was a British banker and humanitarian who established an organisation to rescue children at risk from Czechoslovakia. Born to German-Jewish parents who had emigrated to Britain at the beginning of the 20th century, Winton supervised the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II. Winton found homes for the children and arranged for their safe passage to Britain.[1] This operation was later known as the Czech Kindertransport (German for "children's transport").

His work went unnoticed by the world for nearly 50 years, until 1988 when he was invited to the BBC television programme That's Life!, where he was reunited with dozens of the children he had saved and was introduced to many of their children and grandchildren. The British press celebrated him and dubbed him the "British Schindler".[2] In 2003, Winton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for "services to humanity, in saving Jewish children from Nazi Germany occupied Czechoslovakia".[3] On 28 October 2014, he was awarded the highest honour of the Czech Republic, the Order of the White Lion (1st class), by Czech President Miloš Zeman. He died in his sleep, in 2015, at the age of 106.

Early Life

Winton was born on 19 May 1909 in Hampstead, London to Jewish parents Rudolph Wertheim (1881–1937), a bank manager, and his wife Barbara (née Wertheimer, 1888–1978),[4] as the middle-born of their three children. His elder sister was Charlotte (1908–2001) and the younger brother, Robert (1914–2009).[5][6][7][page needed] His parents were German Jews who had moved to London two years earlier.[8] The family name was Wertheim, but they changed it to Winton in an effort at integration.[9][10] They also converted to Christianity, and Winton was baptised.[11]

In 1923, Winton entered Stowe School, which had just opened.[12] He left without qualifications, attending night school while volunteering at the Midland Bank. He then went to Hamburg, where he worked at Behrens Bank, followed by Wasserman Bank in Berlin.[8] In 1931, he moved to France and worked for the Banque Nationale de Crédit in Paris. He also earned a banking qualification in France. Returning to London, he became a broker at the London Stock Exchange. Though a stockbroker, Winton was also "an ardent socialist who became close to Labour Party luminaries Aneurin Bevan, Jennie Lee and Tom Driberg".[13] Through another socialist friend, Martin Blake, Winton became part of a left-wing circle opposed to appeasement and concerned about the dangers posed by the Nazis.[13]

At school, he had become an outstanding fencer and was selected for the British team in 1938. He had hoped to compete in the following Olympics, but the games were cancelled because of the war.[14]

Rescue Work

Shortly before Christmas 1938, Winton was planning to travel to Switzerland for a skiing holiday. Following a call for help from Marie Schmolka and Doreen Warriner,[15] he decided instead to visit Prague and help Martin Blake,[8] who was in Prague as an associate of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia,[16] then in the process of being occupied by Germany, and had called Winton to ask him to assist in Jewish welfare work.[17] Alongside the Czechoslovak Refugee Committee, the British and Canadian volunteers such as Winton, Trevor Chadwick, and Beatrice Wellington worked in organising to aid children from Jewish families at risk from the Nazis.[18] Many of them set up their office at a dining room table in a hotel in Wenceslas Square.[19] Altogether, Winton spent one month in Prague and left in January 1939, six weeks before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Other foreign volunteers remained, such as Chadwick, Warriner and Wellington.[15] In November 1938, following Kristallnacht in Nazi-ruled Germany, the House of Commons approved a measure to allow the entry into Britain of refugees younger than 17, provided they had a place to stay and a warranty of £50 was deposited for their eventual return to their own country.[20]

Family Life

After the war, Winton worked for the International Refugee Organization and then the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Paris, where he met Grete Gjelstrup, a Danish secretary and accountant's daughter.[5][13] They married in her hometown of Vejle on 31 October 1948.[5]

The family insisted that their son Robin stay with them rather than be sent to a residential home. Robin's death from meningitis, the day before his sixth birthday, affected Winton greatly and he founded a local support organisation which became Maidenhead Mencap. Winton stood, unsuccessfully, for the town council in 1954;[13] he later found work in the finance departments of various companies.[13]

Recognition

It has been reported Winton suppressed his humanitarian exploits for many years; however, he mentioned them in his election material while unsuccessfully standing for election to the Maidenhead town council in 1954.[51][52][53] Otherwise, his rescue achievements went unnoticed for half a century[54] until in 1988 his wife found a detailed scrapbook in their attic,[55] containing lists of the children, including their parents' names and the names and addresses of the families that took them in. She gave the scrapbook to Elisabeth Maxwell, a Holocaust researcher and wife of media magnate Robert Maxwell.[51][55] Winton himself could not remember the reason why this was done.[51] Letters were sent to each of these known addresses and 80 of "Winton's children" were found in Britain.[55]

In an interview on the BBC radio programme The Life Scientific, Simon Wessely described how his father Rudi, one of the rescued children, had a chance encounter with Winton.[56]

The wider world found out about his work in February 1988[51] during an episode of the BBC television programme That's Life![57] when he was invited as a member of the audience. At one point, Winton's scrapbook was shown and his achievements were explained. The host of the programme, Esther Rantzen, asked whether anybody in the audience were among the children who owed their lives to Winton, and if so, to stand: more than two dozen people surrounding Winton rose and applauded.[58] Ms Rantzen then asked if anyone present was the child or grandchild of one of the children Winton saved, and the rest of the audience stood.[59]

He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 2003 when he was surprised by Michael Aspel at Winton House, an Abbeyfield Society care home in Windsor, named in his honour.

Death

Winton died in his sleep on the morning of 1 July 2015 at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough from cardio-respiratory failure, having been admitted a week earlier following a deterioration in his health. He was 106 years old.[62][63][45][64] Winton was survived by his son, Nicholas, and his daughter, Barbara.[65]

Winton's death came 76 years to the day after 241 of the children he saved left Prague on a train.[62] A special report from the BBC News on several of the children whom Winton rescued during the war had been published earlier that day.[37]

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Winton