In 1938, Nicholas Winton was preparing for a skiing holiday when a request for help changed his plans. He travelled to Prague, where children from families facing Nazi persecution needed a route to safety. Over the following months, he helped organise the movement of 669 children from Czechoslovakia to Britain. The rescue depended not on one man alone, but on a network of volunteers, families and officials working across borders—and on the practical arrangements needed to bring children into Britain and find them homes.

From Hampstead to Prague

Winton was born Nicholas George Wertheim in Hampstead, London, on 19 May 1909. His parents, Rudolph and Barbara Wertheim, were German Jews who had moved to London two years earlier. The family changed its surname to Winton, converted to Christianity and had their children baptised. Nicholas was the middle of three children.

He attended Stowe School, which had opened in 1923, but left without qualifications. He continued his education at night school while volunteering at the Midland Bank, then worked at banks in Hamburg and Berlin. In 1931 he moved to Paris, where he worked for Banque Nationale de Crédit and earned a banking qualification. Back in London, he became a broker at the Stock Exchange. He was also involved in left-wing politics and opposed appeasement, concerns that connected him through friends to people working with refugees from Czechoslovakia.

Shortly before Christmas 1938, Winton was due to go skiing in Switzerland. A call for assistance from Martin Blake, who was in Prague working with the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, led him instead to the city. Other appeals for help came from Marie Schmolka and Doreen Warriner. Winton spent about three weeks in Prague, where he helped compile a list of children at risk. He left in January 1939, before German occupation of the country.

A rescue organised across borders

Winton’s part in the rescue was one part of a wider effort. Volunteers including Trevor Chadwick, Beatrice Wellington and Warriner worked in Prague alongside the Czechoslovak Refugee Committee. Other refugee workers included the American Quakers Waitstill and Martha Sharp and the British Quaker Tessa Rowntree. Several worked from a hotel dining room in Wenceslas Square. Winton later emphasised Chadwick’s substantial work on the Prague end of the operation, where the arrangements became more difficult and dangerous after the Germans arrived.

In November 1938, the British House of Commons approved the entry of refugees under 17 if they had somewhere to stay and a £50 guarantee was deposited for each child’s eventual return. Winton helped meet the requirements for bringing children to Britain and finding homes and sponsors for them. He also helped arrange the journeys, including the difficult passage through the Netherlands. After Dutch authorities closed the border to Jewish refugees, British guarantees helped secure permission for the children to cross and continue to the ferry.

Winton’s mother helped place children in homes and, later, hostels. In the summer of 1939 he put photographs of the children in Picture Post to seek British families willing to take them in. He also wrote to American politicians, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, asking the United States to accept more children. The final group, 250 children scheduled to leave Prague on 1 September 1939, could not depart after Germany invaded Poland and war began. Only two of those children survived the war.

In total, 669 children were brought to safety in Britain through the rescue effort associated with Winton. Many of their parents later perished in Auschwitz. The number marks the scale of the operation, but it should not obscure its collective character: volunteers organised evacuations, families took children in, and workers on both sides of the route handled the practical and legal obstacles.

War, family and the rediscovered scrapbook

After war broke out, Winton initially registered as a conscientious objector. He served in an Air Raid Precautions section and with a British Red Cross ambulance unit before joining the Royal Air Force in 1940. He remained in the RAF after the war, leaving the service in 1954 with the honorary rank of flight lieutenant.

After the war, he worked for the International Refugee Organization and then the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Paris. There he met Grete Gjelstrup, a Danish secretary and accountant’s daughter. They married in Denmark in 1948 and had three children. Their son Robin had Down’s syndrome and died of meningitis just before his sixth birthday. Winton subsequently founded a local support organisation that became Maidenhead Mencap.

Winton did not speak publicly about the rescue for decades, but he had referred to his humanitarian work in material for an unsuccessful 1954 campaign for Maidenhead Town Council. In 1988, his wife found a scrapbook in their attic containing lists of the children and details of their families and foster homes. Winton gave it to Holocaust researcher Elisabeth Maxwell, and letters were sent to the addresses recorded in it. The BBC programme That’s Life! brought his story to a much wider audience in February 1988. During a later programme, people he had helped rescue stood in the audience, followed by their children and grandchildren.

Recognition and remembrance

Winton was appointed an MBE in 1983 for services to the community in Maidenhead. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 2003 for services to humanity, recognising his role in saving Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. In 2010, the British Government named him a British Hero of the Holocaust. His other honours included the Czech Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk in 1998 and the Order of the White Lion, the Czech Republic’s highest honour, in 2014.

Recognition also took the form of memorials and meetings with people whose lives had been changed by the rescue. A statue of Winton was unveiled at Prague’s main railway station in 2009, on the 70th anniversary of the final intended Kindertransport. A further statue was unveiled at Maidenhead railway station in 2010. In 2014, Winton returned to Prague to receive the Order of the White Lion and meet some of the children he had helped bring to Britain.

Winton died in Slough on 1 July 2015, aged 106. His death fell 76 years after 241 of the children he helped had left Prague by train. He was cremated, and his ashes were buried at Braywick Cemetery in Maidenhead, alongside his wife Grete and son Robin.

Why Sir Nicholas Winton deserves a place in British Legacy

Winton’s place in British history rests on a defined and consequential contribution: he helped turn a plea for assistance in Prague into a workable route to safety for hundreds of children. That meant more than identifying those at risk. The operation required the children to qualify for entry to Britain, secure sponsors and homes, and travel through countries whose borders and policies could obstruct their passage. Winton’s banking and organisational experience was put to use in a humanitarian effort, while his mother and many other volunteers helped make the arrangements real. The 669 children who reached Britain were rescued by a collective undertaking, and an account of Winton’s role is strongest when it recognises that network as well as his initiative.

The British connection is tangible: the children found refuge here, British families and organisations helped receive them, and Winton’s contribution was recognised with an MBE, a knighthood and the title British Hero of the Holocaust. His story also shows how lives can be shaped by administrative decisions—who may cross a border, what guarantees are required, and whether a home can be found in time. The children who arrived built lives in Britain and elsewhere; many of their parents did not survive. Winton’s scrapbook, rediscovered in 1988, brought the rescue into public view and helped reconnect survivors with the circumstances of their arrival. Remembering him in British Legacy means remembering both an individual who responded to an urgent appeal and the many people whose work made refuge possible.

Sources

Nicholas Winton — Wikipedia revision

Adapted in part from Nicholas Winton by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.