Survivors gather to pay tribute to 'British Schindler'

[IndianaGreen]

Survivors gather to pay tribute to 'British Schindler'

Nicholas Winton rescued 669 children from the Nazis. Yesterday 22 of them returned to Prague to thank him

By Daniel McLaughlin

Wednesday, 2 September 2009

Watching a steam train full of waving passengers pull out of Prague station yesterday, the Meisl brothers recalled the wartime journey that had changed their lives forever.

Peter Meisl was evacuated from Czechoslovakia by a British stockbroker, Nicholas Winton, on the eve of the Second World War along with 668 other children, 22 of whom were on board the commemorative train yesterday as it left Prague in a cloud of steam to begin its four-day trip to London.

Czechoslovakia's Nazi occupiers declared Peter's brother Jiri too old for evacuation and, as Peter lived out the war quietly in Wales, Jiri and their parents were forced on to a prison train and sent to Auschwitz. Their father, like the relatives of scores of "Winton's Children", perished there.

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.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/survivors-gather-to-pay-tribute-to-british-schindler-1780272.html

[appal_jack]

1. k&r for a true living hero

The whole article about this extraordinary man is really worth a read, but these four paragraphs bring tears to my eyes:

The scale of Sir Nicholas's achievements is almost matched by his reticence to discuss them. "I was never really in danger," he has said. "I simply saw a need and I filled it. I wasn't anyone special. I just saw what was going on and did what I could to help."

He did not even tell his wife about his exploits until the late 1980s, when she found a scrapbook of clippings in the attic of their home in Maidenhead. The scrapbook was passed to a Jewish historian and, before long, he was being introduced to some of the people he had saved, on Esther Rantzen's That's Life.

Having previously been awarded only the Freedom of Maidenhead, Winton was now described as "Britain's Oscar Schindler" and the "Pied Piper of Prague" and he was knighted in 2003. Four years later, the Czech Republic gave him its highest honour and nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

(snip)

Sir Nicholas intends to be at Liverpool Street Station in London on Saturday, when the train arrives from Prague. "What will I say when I see Nicholas?" said Eve Leadbeater as she boarded the train. "I will say 'thank you'. What else is there to say?

wow.

-app

[Vidar]

2. Recommended for a hero.