Sir Nicholas Winton Saved 669 Children from Nazi Death Camps

He never had a Steven Spielberg film honor his work, but Sir Nicholas Winton, who died peacefully in his sleep yesterday at the age of 106, organised the rescue of 669 children destined for Nazi concentration camps. Sir Nicholas managed to bring Czech children, mostly Jewish, on eight trains from occupied Prague to Britain through Germany in 1939. The ninth train with 250 children never left Prague because the war broke out. None of the 250 children on board was ever seen again. Fittingly, Sir Nicholas died on the anniversary of the departure of the 1939 train carrying the largest number of children -- 241. Along with the trains from Prague, he also organized other forms of transport set up from Vienna. Often called the British Schindler, Sir Nicholas brought the children to Britain, battling bureaucracy at both ends to save them from almost certain death, and then kept quiet about his exploits for a half-century, until his wife Greta found a detailed scrapbook in their attic in 1988. He had not even told her of his role. "You can't come up to somebody and say : 'by the way do you want to know what I did in '39?' People don't talk about what they did in the war," he told Reuters Television in 2009. Sir Nicholas, born Nicholas Wertheimer in 1909 to Jewish parents, was a young stockbroker in London, but he left his London job in 1938 to go to Prague to help with welfare work for Czech refugees fleeing Nazi occupation. He was 29 when he masterminded the rescue of the children. Sir Nicholas also organised foster families for Jewish children in Britain, placing advertisements in newspapers. The achievements of Sir Nicholas Winton were often compared with those of Oskar Schindler, the ethnic German industrialist who saved the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust and who was the subject of the 1993 Spielberg film "Schindler's List." ~~~~~ Prime Minister David Cameron described Sir Nicholas as a "great man" and the British Chief Rabbi commented on his "exceptional courage." Over the years, Sir Nicholas's work had been recognized with awards and with a small planet discovered by Czech astronomers named in his honor. He was also commended by the US House of Representatives, which said it "urges men and women everywhere to recognize in Winton's remarkable humanitarian effort the difference that one devoted, principled individual can make in changing and improving the lives of others." ~~~~~ Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today mourned the death of Sir Nicholas Winton : "The Jewish people and the State of Israel owe an eternal debt of gratitude to Nicholas Winton, who saved hundreds of Jewish children from the Nazis. In a world plagued by evil and indifference, Winton dedicated himself to saving the innocent and the helpless." Prime Minister Netanyahu added : "His extraordinary moral leadership serves as an example to all of humanity." Netanyahu sent his condolences to Winton's surviving family. ~~~~~ Dear readers, Oskar Schindler, who was coincidentally Czech, once explained his action by saying : "I had to help them. There was no choice." Sir Nicholas Winton expressed the same impetus with other words. The Rotary Club, in honoring him,quoted from a 1939 letter in which Sir Nicholas wrote : "There is a difference between passive goodness and active goodness, which is, in my opinion, the giving of one's time and energy in the alleviation of pain and suffering. It entails going out, finding and helping those in suffering and danger and not merely in leading an exemplary life in a purely passive way of doing no wrong." And, dear readers, we might add, with one of America's Founders, that active goodness is a charactertistic of the Jewish people. John Adams wrote : "The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations." ~~ Rest in peace, Sir Nicholas.