The Pied Piper of Prague

[intaglio]

This is a story of heroism, ethics and compassion.

In 1938 a Briton called Nicholas Winton heard of the invasion of the Sudetenland by Nazi governed Germany. Instead of going on holiday to Switzerland he went to Czechoslovakia and saw for himself the terrible distress of the refugees.

From The Independent newspaper (link below)

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. 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 Britain. Seventy years on, as the steam train whistled its impending departure, they recalled parents telling them that they were just going on a short holiday, the excitement of the older children and the bewilderment of the younger ones. They remembered their strange first impressions of Britain, spitting out a first sip of milky tea and their wonder at white sliced bread.

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

Today many of those children, now elderly, will begin a journey by steam train to the UK where they will be greeted on arrival by Sir Nicholas Winton

[Libertas1776]

1. What a

heartbreaking yet heartwarming story. I never knew about this man. Thank you for posting this.