Sir Nicholas George Winton, MBE, who died last week at the age of 106, was a British humanitarian who organized the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish Czechoslovakian children on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the "Czech Kindertransport."
An article in Time paying tribute to Winton, a Jew by descent who had been raised as a Christian, was traveling in German-occupied Czechoslovakia and recognize that many children would die. He found homes for the children and arranged for trains to carry them from Nazi-occupied Prague to Britain. He drew up lists of thousands of children and persuaded families to accept these refugee children. No small feat, as he was asking people to take a child from a different country and often a different tradition into their homes.
Winton kept quiet about his work, and the truth of his heroism for almost 50 years until his wife found documents in the attic about the children. The story was finally told and Winton was Knighted by the Queen of England. This moving video is a clip from the BBC Programme, "That’s Life," and aired in 1988.
And today we celebrate...