In 1988 Greta Winton was scrambling around the attic of the home in Buckinghamshire where she lived with her husband Nicholas and she uncovered a secret that he had kept from her and the whole world for 50 years. Her find was a detailed scrapbook that gave details of the daring plan her husband had masterminded to rescue Czech Jewish children and transport them to safe homes in the UK before the outbreak of World War 11 in 1939. It contained lists of the 669 children he had rescued, the names and addresses of their parents, and the details of their new foster parents who looked after them for the duration of the War.
Winton was about to travel to Switzerland for a skiing holiday in Christmas 1938, when he decided instead to travel to Prague, Czechoslovakia, to help a friend who was involved in Jewish refugee work, and had called him asking for his help. There he single-handedly established an organisation to aid children from Jewish families at risk from the Nazis. He set up an office at a dining room table in his hotel in Wenceslas Square. He wrote directly to all the Heads of States in every major country asking for asylum, but only Britain would agree to take these children in.
With very little help, and few funds, and battling officialdom at every level, he secured the transport to make three journeys with trains packed full of children. A fourth one was scheduled to leave Prague on September 3rd 1939 the day that War broke out but the train never left, and the children on board faced certain death.
Esther Rantzen, a BBC Journalist, took up the story in 1988, and invited Winton to appear on ‘That’s Life’ TV Programme where he was shocked to discover that the Producers had also rounded up a few dozen of the survivors to greet the man who would become to been known as the ‘British Schindler’.
This selfless humanitarian who had kept his exploits quiet from the world for half a century was knighted by The Queen, and had countless honors heaped on him by the Czech & Slovak Governments as well as being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2009, on the 70th Anniversary of the journeys, a special ‘Winton Train’ re-traced the journey from Prague to London full of survivors and their families that numbered many people who have also had very distinguished lives.
Winton, still alive at the grand age of 104 years old, has never ceased doing unsung work to help others in need …. his list of achievements since the War, is staggering. What is equally impressive, as detailed in this documentary, is all the good works that his example has inspired from the people whose lives he saved. None of them ever saw their parents again, or even managed to achieve much ‘closure’ on their deaths, but what Winton gave them all was a chance and a reason to live.
A wonderful insight to a most remarkable human being. A hero in the true sense of the word. Totally unmissable.
★★★★★★★★★
Now available on DVD and AMAZON VOD
Labels: 2011, biography, docu-drama, documentary, war
