 cakebelly says: more: The Meisls' story is just one of dozens of extraordinary tales from the now elderly men and women who owe their lives to Winton. As the former evacuees gathered in Prague for their train journey, they hailed his compassion and determination, celebrated their survival and mourned for those children that were not able to escape. In December 1938, 29-year-old Winton was packing for a skiing holiday in Switzerland when his would-be holiday companion told him to come urgently to Czechoslovakia instead. Adolf Hitler's forces had occupied the country's Sudetenland, and Winton was appalled to see the conditions in which the refugees were living. In other parts of central Europe, "kindertransporten" were already evacuating children, but Czechoslovakia had no such programme. Winton immediately started raising money and organising trains to save the children, and on his return to Britain began finding homes and organising visas for them, all while holding down his day job in London. W Word of Winton's audacious plan quickly spread throughout Prague. When he returned to the Czech capital and set up office in his hotel room on Wenceslas Square, long queues soon formed outside of parents who would plead with him to take their children to Britain. "Those parents were desperate – it was heartbreaking to listen to their stories," Winton, now Sir Nicholas Winton, recalled in a 2007 interview. "They knew all too well what their fate was likely to be. Their first thought was for the little ones. Never themselves. Practically all those parents perished in the camps." Between March and August 1939, eight Winton trains carried 669 children – most of them Jewish – to safety in Brita... BBC has a video on this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8231004.stm Thanks for the link I've been to the Jewish Quarter in Prague, and I'll never forget the Theresienstadt ghetto. Almost 10,000 children passed through there, ostensibly to "continue their education". They were encouraged to express themselves artistically, and their drawings today adorn the walls of a former barracks turned museum. It is estimated that no more than 1,000 children survived, and maybe as few as 100. What a great man this was, to save so many from this horror. Were that there were more like him. |
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