The story became known to the public in 1988 when it featured on That’s Life, a BBC TV programme hosted by Esther Rantzen.
In 2003 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for Services to Humanity for this work.
Youth
Nicholas Winton was born on the 19th May 1909 in London into a Jewish family. He never denied his origin even though his family was excluded from the Jewish community. He studied at Hampstead and at Stowe and later became a real estate broker. He travelled extensively through Europe and lived in Germany for a while, where he worked in a bank. However, when the threat of the Nazis began to increase, Winton decided to move back to Britain.
Short video on deeds of sir Nicholas Winton
Rescue of children from the threatened area of Czechoslovakia
In 1938 Winton had decided to holiday in the Alps. However, after his friend phoned him and described the situation in Czechoslovakia and asked for help, Winton changed his plans. Although Winton had other responsibilities, he immediately went to Prague with only one goal – to help the endangered people. In Prague, Winton created an office and contacted international embassies to secure asylum for as many at risk Czechoslovak citizens as possible.
The only positive response came from Great Britain. All other countries had closed their borders. However, British ambassadors were given strict conditions concerning the transport of Jewish citizens to Great Britain. British borders would only allow children through, and 50 Pounds per child had to be paid. Winton’s office, situated in a typical Prague house, began to fill with parents who wanted to save their children from the Nazi danger. Archives with photos of all the registered children were made. These photographs were later printed in British newspapers for British families wanting to adopt Czechoslovak children. Time was against the Winton team and thus everything had to be done very quickly. When all the children were registered and British families had chosen the children for whom they would provide asylum, Nicholas Winton faced the final and most difficult task – to ensure all passengers visas and safe transport.
Winton´s team realised the situation was so desperate, they decided to falsify the visas, thus increasing the danger. In spite of all this, eight trains successfully managed to get to Great Britain via Germany and France where the children came to safety and were given a new home. The final, ninth train with 250 children, did not reach Britain, because of the breakout of the war on the 1st September 1939. Despite the unsuccessful dispatch of the last train, Nicholas Winton saved 669 Czechoslovak children.
Life after the war
Winton then returned to his home country, where he devoted himself to clerical work. He kept his noble deed a secret for many decades. Had it not been for his wife Greta, who accidentally found the scrapbook with photos of the rescued children in the attic of their house, we would probably have never found out about the unbelievable things Nicholas Winton managed to achieve.
Honours
In 1998, president Václav Havel invited Winton for a private visit to Prague and awarded him with the order of T.G. Masaryk. In his home country, Winton was awarded the OBE. Thus his full name now goes by the title Sir Nicholas Winton.
Winton's children
It could almost be a normal birthday party, with music, presents and a cake. But the cake has 105 candles and many of the 100 or so guests who are here to celebrate the birthday of Sir Nicholas Winton owe him their life.
Winton's 105th birthday party is at the Czech embassy in London, and the guests here are the offspring of 669 children - mostly Jewish - rescued by Winton from almost certain death in the months before the second world war broke out in 1939. Most of their families ended up interred and murdered in Nazi concentration camps. Today they call themselves "Nicky's children".
Ruth Hálová is 88 and has flown over for the party from South Bohemia in the Czech Republic. Others have come from as far as New Zealand and the USA. Hálová was one of the children who came over on one of the Kindertransport journeys and she stayed with a British family throughout the war while her mother was in the concentration camp at Terezín, Czechoslovakia.
“I first met Nicky when he came to visit Yad Vashem in Jerusalem," Hálová told the Guardian. "I was there just visiting family and they phoned me at 10 o’clock at night and said: 'Nicholas Winton is here!' It was just amazing to meet him and to see him again today. It is never too long or too far to come and see Nicky.”
But Hálová would never have met Winton had his wife Grete not discovered a scrapbook in the loft some 50 years later. He kept his rescue mission quiet for half a century, not telling even his wife or family. When the story emerged in 1988, it did so in spectacular fashion on the BBC's That's Life programme. Sitting in the audience, Winton was astonished when Esther Rantzen announced live on air that the woman sitting next to him, and much of the rest of the audience, were people that he had saved.
The programme reunited Winton with one of his party guests, Lord (Alfred) Dubs, a Labour politician. Dubs's father fled Prague in March 1939 for England and they were reunited when Dubs arrived on the Kindertransport at Liverpool Street station. Dubs has become firm friends with Winton since. He says: "It's not often you can say to somebody: it's thanks to you that I am here at all. I make more speeches because I know Nicky than because of everything else I know."
Guests have brought presents and gifts but one in particular stands out: a book from his daughter, Barbara Winton. The party also serves as the launch of the biography she has written about him, its title paying tribute to one of his many catchphrases, humble and pragmatic in equal measure: "If it's not impossible, then it can be done."
There are birthday cards and letters too - from the prime minister and the president of the Czech Republic. Michael Zantovsky, the country's ambassador, announces that in October this year Winton will be awarded the Order of the White Lion, the highest order in the Czech Republic.
