In late 1938, a British stockbroker named Nicholas Winton used his holiday to take a trip to Prague after a friend phoned him to tell of the desperate plight of many children. He ended up saving the lives of 669 children, mostly Jews, from almost certain death. Here are some photos and documents from a scrapbook detailing his efforts, which is housed at the Yad Vashem archives in Jerusalem. Some of the children featured in the scrapbook never made it to England, and have been traced to the death camps.

The ninth train – the biggest transport – was to leave Prague on September 3, 1939, the day Britain entered the war – but the train never left the station. ‘Within hours of the announcement, the train disappeared,’ Winton later recalled. ‘None of the 250 children on board was seen again. We had 250 families waiting at Liverpool Street that day in vain. If the train had been a day earlier, it would have come through. Not a single one of those children was heard of again, which is an awful feeling.’

None of the children set to flee that day survived the following years. Later, more than 15,000 Czech children were also killed.

In May he wrote a personal letter to President Roosevelt, pleading for help.

May 16th 1939

Esteemed Sir,

Perhaps people in America do not realise how little is being and has been done for refugee children in Czechoslovakia. They have to depend entirely on private guarantors to get into England, which means that somebody had to take full responsibility for maintenance, upkeep, and education, until hey are 18 years of age. No other country is taking an interest in them except for Sweden. which took 35 children in February. We at this office have case-papers and photos of over 5,000 children, quite apart from a further 10,000 whom we hope to register. Actually, so far, we have bought only about 100 into England.

In Bohemia and Slovakia there are thousands of children some homeless and starving, mostly without nationality, but they certainly have one thing in common: there is no future if they are forced to remain where they are. Their parents are forbidden work and the children are forbidden schooling, and apart from physical discomforts, which all this signifies, the more degradation is immeasurable. Yet since Munich, hardly anything has been done for the children in Czechoslovakia. Many of the children are quite destitute having had to move more than once since they originally fled from Germany.

Is it possible for anything to be done to help us with this problem in America? It is hard to state our case forcibly in alter, but we trust to your imagination to realise how desperately urgent the situation is.

believe me, esteemed sir, with many thanks,

your obedient servant,

Nicholas Winton

A few weeks later he received a reply:

I beg leave to state in reply that the United States Government is unable, in the absence of specific legislation to permit immigration in excess of that provided for by existing immigration laws. Rudolf Schoenfield Sec to US Embassy London

Funds had to be found for repatriation costs, and a foster home for each child. He also had to raise money to pay for the transports when the children’s parents could not cover the costs. He advertised in British newspapers, and in churches and synagogues. He printed groups of children’s photographs all over Britain. He felt certain that seeing the children’s photos would convince potential sponsors and foster families to offer assistance. Finding sponsors was only one of the endless problems in obtaining the necessary documents from German and British authorities.

“Officials at the Home Office worked very slowly with the entry visas. We went to them urgently asking for permits, only to be told languidly, ‘Why rush, old boy? Nothing will happen in Europe.’ This was a few months before the war broke out. So we forged the Home Office entry permits.”

He never told a soul about his work, until one day in 1988 his wife Grete found a suitcase full of papers in the attic. Nicholas Winton insisted he wasn’t anything special, adding, ‘I just saw what was going on and did what I could to help.’ In 2002 he was knighted for his services to humanity. Today, Sir Nicholas Winton, age 105, lives at his home in Maidenhead, Great Britain. He still wears a ring given to him by some of the children he saved. It is inscribed with a line from the Talmud, the book of Jewish law. It reads:

“Save one life, save the world.”

http://www.nicholaswinton.eu/en/pribeh-nicholase-wintona