"We are familiar with evil of these days." "We are bombarded with it daily on our TVs." "For most of us this violence seems remote, even unreal." "We may be horrified, but hey it is not our problem." "And anyway there's nothing much we can do about it, can we?" "And indeed, we almost never do." "And I'm a reporter who for more than fifty years covered the world wars and other misfortunes." "Amidst of the violence and miseries, that I witnessed I have also seen acts of kindness, compassion and courage." "But there is one such story I missed, my own - the story of how Nicky Winton saved my life and that of so many others." "The question that grips us still is why did he do it?" "Why when the whole world had abandoned us did this man go out of his way to save us and why did he keep silent about it for decades?" "It was a mystery that began to unravel only when this forgotten scrapbook surfaced." "TITLE:" "Nicholas Winton - The PO WER of GOOD" "Until 1988 no one knew of the story, certainly not the hundreds of people who owe their lives to what happened." "All that remained of it was locked away in a memory of a (one man) couple of old men and in this scrapbook." "A scrapbook of photographs of children caught up in a lottery of life and death, of urgent telegrams, pleading letters from desperate parents." "And with them a rush of childhood memories." "Memories of the 1930's - of the pleasures of childhood in Czechoslovakia - the place we all came from." "It was a stable peaceful and tolerant democracy in the heart of Europe." "My family lived in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia." "Well, I mean it was city I grew up." "I took it naturally." "It was a bilingual, multilingual city." "All the signs were in Slovak, in German, in Hungarian." "There were three names " "Bratislava, Pressburg, Pozony." "Life in the city was slow and easy." "There were all sorts of music." "What I remember most vividly are the small things." "Going to a cafe with my father and drinking hot chocolate with whipped cream on top." "It was a pleasant world." "And my memories of the Czech schools were very, very happy." "We had a very active drama department." "Our fore master was extremely lively and very active on Czech radio." "My memories of Czech schooldays are very, very happy." "We went to visit the Carlsbad, which I remember more than my home village of Kodau, where I was born." "We used to go for every Sunday afternoon for the five o'clock tea dance at the Pupp's Hotel on the promenade." "And we saw what the good life or we saw the remnants of the good life of the 30th in Europe before Nazism was born and grew and strength" "in Middle or Central Europe." "Well, you know, even if you were a child in Central Europe, you couldn't but help sense that there was danger, danger to your country and especially danger if you were a Jew." "In a sense I grew up with Hitler." "At first he seemed only a distant danger someone we could joke about imitating his Charlie Chaplin moustache and his odd cowlick hairdo." "You could hear Hitler's voice roaring on the radio." "There would be German minority - Sudeten Germans and yelling:" "Lieber Fuhrer mach uns frei von der Tschechoslowakei" " Dear Fuhrer liberates us from Czechoslovakia / and I could see the Germans getting closer and closer." "On the street I remember being attacked by a couple of kids from Hitlerjugend running away on my way to school, so the tension, the fear was there." "It was talked about at the dinner table." "Both my mother and father read Mein Kamf." "They argued about whether it was possible for Hitler to do what he wrote he was going to do." "My mother believed that it could be done." "My father didn't believe it because the Meisel family spent nearly a thousand years in Czechoslovakia and were more Czech than Jews and more Czech that most of the Czechs." "The Czechs protested Hitler's demands for a chunk of their country the Sudeten borderlands." "Czechoslovakia mobilized to defend itself." "But the Czechs needed help from their allies in the West." "And it wasn't forthcoming." "Here, in the British Parliament and not for that any matter in any other democracy was there any great will to confront Hitler and risk war." "So the British and French prime ministers went to Munich gave up and signed a humiliating deal with Hitler." "So, when Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich and waved that piece of paper that he sold out Czechoslovakia and announced peace in out time a wave of relief" "swept throughout most of Europe, but not in Czechoslovakia, of course." "My family lived in Sudentenland and in 1938 things got so bad that we had to flee." "We took whatever we could and we had to leave everything and we went to Stankov," "and then to Beroun and eventually to Prague." "We had one of the young refugees in our class and they left in such a hurry that..." "they never even took any clothes, not many clothes and her father just scooped her at night in her pyjamas in a blanket and she came to school with no shoes and that really shook me." "I remember during a break" "I went home and took a pair of shoes from my cupboard and I thought that my mother would be very, very crossed that I gave them to this young girl and when I told her about it" "she hugged me and there were tears in her eyes and she said." "Bring Anna back after school and let's see what other clothes we can find for her." "The first pages of the scrapbook and of our story came to be written in December 1938." "You look at the pictures and the list and you have to wonder what made 29 year old Englishman do such a thing." "Why did he compile our list?" "This is the list and here somewhere is my name on it." "If it hadn't been for this list, if it hadn't been for Nicky Winton and handful of people who worked for him," "I certainly wouldn't have been here today." "The world was Nicky Winton's oyster." "He lived in London, he was young, he was single and in the depth of a great depression he had a good job as a stockbroker." "A job that paid well enough for a young man to indulge himself which in 1939 with Christmas approaching he intended to do." "He and a friend Martin Blake should go to Switzerland to ski." "They never made it." "I only went to Prague because we discussed at various times" "if not daily what was happening in Europe." "And if Martin Blake was going to Prague to see a friend of his who was helping to get out various people (refugees)" "He sought it would be of interest to me." "I mean the last thing I thought when I set out from Prague was that I was going to do a job of work." "Hello." "And I met him at hotel Sroubek and next day already I was sent with other people Elena Rathbone and reverend Loslee Lee" "round the various camps where a lot of these refugees were living." "The situations in the camp were extremely bad, it was very cold." "These refugees felt as we felt that their days were numbered before the Germans were going to arrive in Czechoslovakia." "But how could they save themselves, what could they do, where should they go?" "They were stuck." "While Winton was in Prague, he was shaken by a map that he was given." "A map of German plans and ambitions for territorial expansion." "It's from the fall 38 Ein Volk, ein Reich" " Ein fuehrer / One people, one Empire, one Fuhrer," "Gross Deutschland 38  48 and what it showed was that the Germans had ambition to take over the whole Europe." "Nobody had believed it." "In the camps there were all these children and nobody knew what was going to happen to them." "None of the children were being looked after." "And I was told that there was no organization to deal with the children." "So the idea came to me that these children had to be saved." "Everybody in Prague said Look, there is no organization to deal with the children, we can't deal with them, anyway nobody will let the children to go on their own." "If you want to have a go, have go." "And there is nothing that can't be done, if it's fundamentally reasonable." "And he started writing letters;" "help to save the children of this courageous and desperately unfortunate people." "Many of those letters went to the USA." "He even wrote to the White House." "He wrote to President Roosevelt and then several weeks later he got a reply from the American Embassy in London." "And the reply said in effect the United States Government is unable to permit emigration in excess of that provided for by existing emigration laws." "And the number of children who were in urgent need the country for safety was certainly over two thousand." "This is where I had to come down or I came down every morning." "I sat in the corner down there to have my breakfast." "I wasn't sitting there for more than about two minutes before the first people came who wanted to talk to me and find out how they could get their children to England and this went on the whole time I was here." "I mean I was followed round the whole time by German spies." "And I can remember one evening when we always compared notes on what we had done during the day." "And Doreen said to me in German:" "Until that gentleman over there behind the newspaper leaves, we just talk about the weather." "And he got up and walked away." "It seems to us that the Germans wouldn't be doing all that unless they had inferious intentions." "You had all these refugees who were fleeing from Hitler and who were in danger of their lives if Hitler made another move into Czechoslovakia." "Then came the fifteenth of March." "The day when German troops occupied what remained of Czechoslovakia." "I woke off hearing German soldiers marching into our square." "When the commandant of German troops decided to take over the room in our house." "Father refused to agree to speak German only our household." "No." "We shall speak Czech and German only in your presence." "And the commandant spat in my father's face." "I never forget the saliva running down his cheeks." "Winton wrote all over looking for countries to take over his children." "Only two responded positively." "Sweden and his own country Britain." "The rest of the world closed its eyes, its ears, its hearts and its gates." "Nicky Winton started his mission to save the endangered children from scratch (here in London)." "There was no organization." "No existing pipeline." "And he knew that time was running out." "That war was about to come." "From this house on London Hampstead Heath," "Winton conducted his campaign to get the Germans to let the children out, the British Home Office to let them in, to find British families to take them into their homes and to raise the money to make it all possible." "When I say the committee in London it was me and a secretary and a few volunteers." "We had no office or anything, we worked in my house." "The conditions which were laid down for bringing in a child were chiefly that you had a family that were willing and able to look after the child" "until it was seventeen and the fifty pounds which was quite a large sum of money in those days was it to deposit to the authorities " "the Home Office in this case." "The most difficult side was of course was finding a family to take the children." "If somebody said that they wanted to take a child of about eight, and they wanted say a girl, I sent them half a dozen photos of girls" "of about eight and let them choose, which in retrospect can be considered rather a commercial way of dealing with human beings, but it worked because it was quick and speed was the most important" "thing at that time, we thought speed was more important than the politicians did at that moment." "Prague Castle / welcome message of Czech Prime Minister to Reich's Protector" "In Czechoslovakia the persecution of all the Jews was rapidly increasing and with that the number of children seeking to leave the country also grew." "Times were very desperate and my mother realized that in order to save us she would have to send us on our own, so she just organized our departure" "and left us, four children on their own." "My mother was very anxious that we should pursue the possibilities of emigration." "But somehow my father's heart wasn't in it." "Because he knew that there was the whole family there and he couldn't get permits for everyone." "This whole question of leaving to England or America became a reality and it was discussed to the extent that immediate arrangements had to be made to sell the store, to pack all the apartment," "all our worldly goods, if you want to say that, they would take longer, that in the meantime we would go and spend two or three months in England." "Pressure from the parents for us to get their children to England was incredible." "We in London at that time thought that there was going to be a catastrophe at any moment." "And for us time was absolutely essential, we cut all kinds of corners, even having faked passports or travel documents made at some time" "(in Prague), because a Home Office was a bit slow." "Some of the papers were forged, but it was a forgery to bamboozle the Germans, really not to bamboozle the British." "We didn't bring anybody in illegally, we just speed a process up a little." "My parents were among those desperate to send their children abroad." "I remember my mother saying to a friend." "We are going to send our boys to England, just until it blows over you know and to me it seemed" "like a great adventure..." "going to England, you know." "I was send to uncle Sigmund, the dentist who took out all my fillings and put gold into my teeth because my parents thought" "that I would not have no money on my own in England." "So my teeth were filled with family gold." "Here is the contents which was permitted and was actually packed in my suitcase here for instance, it gives details one pair of shoes." "We arrived to the station very early." "I remember wearing a label." "I think we each had two suitcases." "Ok." "And this is the actual suitcase that my parents packed and which I took in 1939 to first to England for a week and then up to Scotland and here is" "the sign, a label from London to Glasgow a here is the label from the Wilson station." "My mother and friend of hers saw me off." "I was conscious my mother was very tense but I didn't understand why." "I remember there was a SS soldier with a swastika standing on the platform and lots of others parents who were seeing their children off." "And there was some delay in a train leaving." "I don't know what the cause of that was." "The departure was really the tension that I sensed without understanding it." "The train was due to leave on Saturday, they used to ring me up in my office say" "Thursday or Friday saying they wanted another thousand pounds, or the train couldn't go." "So it was very hard to arrange and one just had to find money at that time." "I mean with all the children assembled here, all the families waiting for the children to arrive in London." "If children cried." "If they clung to their mothers, it was much worse for their parents." "They couldn't have known that this would be the last time they would ever see their children." "But on the other hand they couldn't have but help, think it." "One agonized mother whose little girl was already aboard took her off and changed her mind again and put her back on the train." "Decades later I would catch myself looking at my own children try to recapture a fraction of a dread that those parents, my parents must have felt." "A final hug, very precious." "As there were the words of love and words of hope." "I never forget the anguish expression on my parents faces at that moment." "It was the first time that their inner feelings came to the surface." "Until then they did very best to mask them." "The steam sort of pouring, was it the morning or the night's mist I don't know, but, I know" "I could not see clearly as we were leaving the station and my eyes were just focused on mother and father." "Because we came from Slovakia my brother and I were not allowed to join the train in Prague." "And so with my father we waited for it here on the platform at Lovosice, then a border station just inside the German's Reich." "The train ran late that night because of the document mix up and as night fell the German station master insisted we go inside." "But not into the waiting room though, because in Hitler's Germany it was closed to Jews." "Instead the station master push away us into the toilets." "And so the last time I saw my father we spent the night beside a smelling urinal inside Hitler's Reich." "On the train it was kind of odd." "Some of the kids cried, my younger brother cried, I had to look after him because my parents told me to look after him." "And others thought I suppose it was a bit of luck, an adventure." "In a train which ran through Germany, just before it crossed the border into Holland, the train stopped and they decided" "to look for all kinds of things, and they came into our compartment and they took out a 6 year old boy things and took his little suitcase because of his hand luggage and turned it outside down like that" "and the poor boy he must have been six years old." "My face must have got completely red." "I know people looked at me and say, what's the matter with you." "I said:" "I don't know." "I don't feel very well." "I remember German police coming on board, when train had stopped." "And then Dutch police came on board and there was the general feeling of immense relaxation that these people were friendly." "And that was the feeling that went through the entire train and everything was opened, windows were opened for the first time" "and we were served white bread." "I never had bread of this kind." "It felt as it was wet." "We were served hot cocoa and bread." "It was white bread." "Of course I was used to dark bread Central European dark bread." "To us white bread was, well what white bread is to me now, it was kind of odd stuff and we came to a Hook of Holland and boarded" "this big ship because all I have seen were the peddle steamers that went up and down the Danube in Bratislava." "That night... as we crossed the English Channel... suspended for a few hours in the calmness of the ship rocking us to sleep I heard voices from nearby cabins singing the Czech national anthem Where is my home..." "...Where is my home." "...Kde domov m_j..." "Kde domov m_j..." "Kde domov m_j..." "...Where is my home." "It was a question that remained unanswered for many of us for years a question that for a few remains unanswered to this day." "Liverpool Street Station." "This is where we arrived in London." "I don't remember the building." "What I do remember is getting off the train." "The fact that you did not have to climb down as you did in Central Europe climb down to the rails, that the platform was even with the train and I was impressed." "Liverpool Street Station." "Arrival of another group of refugee children." "Another sad cargo thrown overboard by a ruthless European temper." "A special effort has been made to help the refugees on Mother's Day." "Then the train arrived and you had up to two hundred, two hundred and fifty children getting out and you had to get the right child to the right family." "And you had to treat it as a business." "When you got the right child to the right family, the family had to sign for the child so that you have some proof of delivery." "That first night in England, my brother and I spent it someone's house in London." "I didn't know whose house it was, all I remember is that for the first time" "I slept under the blanket, the blanket was a kind of tight." "I was used to feather down duvet, which was..." "And I didn't want to disturb the bed." "So I felt sort of strapped in." "I was left standing alone next to a chair with my little rucksack waiting for someone to come and claim me." "When the door opened and there stood this little lady hardly taller then myself, with a big smile from ear to ear, she ran towards me with tears and laughter." "And she flung her arms around me and spoke some words which I did not understand then, but they were:" "You shall be loved." "My parents wrote to my foster aunt and uncle in Glasgow." "We thank you from all our hearts for your great love and care you that surround our child and we only wish from all our hearts that Tommy in his childlike ignorance may not presume upon your kindness by his naughtiness." "Once the children had arrived and were with their new families," "I had no contact with them any more." "I knew that they were being well looked after and some went to the Czechoslovak School in Wales." "We just helped each other." "We all helped each other because we had no mums and dads to do our mending, and we didn't have any fathers to mend our bicycles" "and you volunteered to mend it and I saw I volunteered in return to dawn your socks." "And you know that's how we formed partnerships in our class." "Those years spent at school were among the happiest in my life." "We immediately became involved in the social life of that lady." "She was actually a head mistress of a small private school and it was very religious, in other words all Baptist." "Of course, we had to go church twice every Sunday." "Although, of course, we were Jewish, but that didn't cause any problems to her." "I went to live with a strongly Christian home." "The Bible was read every day." "From that time I wanted to live a Christian life." "And the only other people who objected to what I was doing was when one day a couple of rabbis arrived at my home and said they understood that some of the good Jewish children" "I was bringing over to this country were going to Christian homes and that must stop and I said, well, it won't stop and they said, well, we insist and I said, well, I mean, this is what I am doing" "and if you prefer a dead Jew in Prague to alive one who is being brought up in a Christian home I said that's your problem, not mine." "These youngsters are some of the lucky ones who managed to get out from their country when it was overrun by the Germans." "Many of them have experience of horrors of invasion in their own home." "Few of them know what happened to their fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers." "As Winton kept pressing for his Home Office permits to allow the children to the country, the people at the Home Office were not annoyed sort of saying:" "What's you hurry?" "Nothing's gonna happen." "Well, Nicky Winton knew better." "He knew that the end was nearing, that things has become urgent and that he had to work fast enough to get more children out." "We had organized eight transports from Prague." "We had quite a few thousand children that wanted to come." "For the beginning of September we had arranged a transport which would have comprised 250 children." "All the preparations had been made and then suddenly..." "We older ones were allowed to stay until nine o'clock and listen to the news." "And that was the first time that the radio announced what was happening to the Jews in Czechoslovakia." "I had obviously already left Prague by 1942 when Jews had to wear stars of David their friends began to walk on the opposite side of the streets and to avoid all contact." "For integrated Jews" "I think it was a great shock and disappointment that society didn't stand by them a bit more." "We learnt about the concentration camps and the possibility that our parents might have been taken to them." "Most of us lived under the illusion that perhaps they escaped the transports, that perhaps they were still at home." "The greatest regret was that our biggest transport which was two hundred fifty children which was due to live at the beginning of September was cancelled because war started." "And none of those children survived." "Nothing that happened prior to the war starting was really of any importance any more." "What was done was done, what couldn't be done, couldn't be done." "Once you can't stop the war and there is a war, you are supposed to go to the defence of your country and I joined the RAF." "All through the war none of us had any news of our parents." "After the war ended in forty five, many of us came back to Czechoslovakia looking for them." "I came here to Prague to the building behind me which served as a clearing house for separated families." "Inside wall upon wall filled with notices put up by people looking for their missing loves ones." "Of my parents though not a trace." "I know they were deported to Poland by the Nazis but to this day" "I am not certain how they came to die." "And I have a letter that was sent a few days before my family was taken to concentration camp." "And when I think it's very difficult..." "...that my mother was a little older" "than my daughter." "I realized that we were not going to see our parents again." "I don't know it's very difficult for me excuse me." "I always believed that family is the most important thing." "And someone I believe is looking at us." "I am sorry..." "I don't know how to say." "Everything we do down here" "is somehow being recorded, not only on your camera." "We found almost none of our family or close relatives still alive, we scattered all over the world, but wherever we went we formed" "new families, we developed new homes and we started life over anew." "I have got a clue where all these seven hundred children were." "I wasn't attached with any of them." "For me it was an episode." "And it was something that happens, so many more important, to me more important things happened in the meantime." "All his he's been involved in helping the community, in various charities, he's been most recently involved in England with Abbeyfield, which is an old people's network of homes, and at the age of eighty five he was attending one" "of the old people's parties." "And was most distressed to be thought of as one of the old people." "He is very keen on his gardening and he spends a lot of time in the garden, but he is a very domesticated husband." "He does a lot of helping out in the house." "I get annoyed because he is very untidy." "I am not all that tidy, but he is really very untidy." "I am fairly happy with Greta, with what I've done, what we do together," "Fairly." "I like that." "Very, very happy." "He's very, very nice." "I like him a lot." "I am one of the fortunate few who lived." "But for fifty years I didn't know how it came to be, that, when all around me, so many died, my parents, family and friends" "and millions of others, how it came to be that I was spared." "Until this scrapbook surfaced in the late eighties then I knew." "The scrapbook and its story gathered dust for decades in the Winton's attic until one day Nicky's wife Greta found it, opened it, became fascinated and yet was puzzled." "And so fifty years after it happened Nicky Winton finally told his wife what he had so long kept secret." "It was a very small of his life and he had forgotten about it." "Until we found the papers, and so there was no reason why he should talk about that." "I suppose there are quite a number of things which husbands don't tell their wives." "And I've got the famous book that is here." "This is actually not the book in itself, but it is a perfect facsimile of the book and a list of names and addresses." "There were very simple, they were Czech names, most of them followed by very ordinary English address" "like 6..." "Cambulance St." "It was enormously moving and I've got very excited about it, so I wrote to this six hundred- - forty seven addresses." "And out of these addresses we got something like two hundred ten, twenty answers, most of them had no idea at all" "of the existence of Winton." "I didn't believe it, OK." "But this lady said to me, what's your name?" "So I said Pinkasovitch." "She took this file and I see my name in there Pinkasovitch." "When I saw it, I can't tell you how I felt, how intense..." "I had goose bumps all over..." "I mean all these years, fifty years..." "Nobody knew who masterminded our rescue, nobody knew a thing and that out of the blue I was asked to take part in a TV show "That's life" where to my joy oh, such fulfilment," "I came face, face to face with a man who saved my life." "I hadn't been told in advance what was going to happen." "I was summoned to the studio." "...and I became part of this program." "I was going to meet for the first time since the outbreak of war with children that I brought over so many years before." "This is his scrapbook." "There are all kinds of fascinating pictures in it." "Perhaps you can see this is a picture of Nicholas Winton himself with one of the children he rescued." "Look at the very back of the scrapbook." "Fascinating thing in it." "All the letters." "In fact here is the list of all the children." "This is Vera Diamant." "Now Vera Gissing." "We did find her name on his list." "Vera Gissing is with us tonight," "Hello Vera, and I should tell you are actually sitting next to Nicholas Winton." "Thank you." "Thank you." "I wore this around my neck and this is the actual pass that we were given to come to England." "And I am another of the children that you saved." "Can I ask is there anyone in our audience tonight who owes their life to Nicholas Winton." "If so, could you stand up please?" "In order to express a certain amount of gratitude for what was done to me, I have to try and help other people" "in anyway I can personally do." "I went to the Philippines to help people in the jungle we adopted two children we sponsored refugees from Russia and Eritrea." "You help people." "I live today in a place where I have the opportunity to help people." "Now I work two days a week in children's hospital as a volunteer." "We've got to live as best as we can." "We've got to contribute something to the world and live in a way my parents would be proud of." "It's a great privilege to be here." "To be able to try to influence politics, to had a chance to be a government minister which is a tremendous thing." "I wish my parents live to know about it." "So it's very lucky for me." "I've been very lucky indeed and I hope I made some contribution." "I think Winton's story is quite unusual." "In 1938 he had an intuition and not many people had that intuition, that here was really dangerous situation endangering lives of people" "which nobody recognized at that time." "He felt he should do something for these children." "And in the moment when you start to do it and you have some small victory then are looking for a bigger." "As my children are grandparents now, that makes me a great, great father and I don't feel as old as that, quite frankly." "It's curious in a way I come here to Prague for a week, and I seem to be very important, and it's in all the newspapers, and I shall go home and nobody knows anything about the story" "and I shall be working in my garden, and that would be very nice." "You know I believe, that one of the highest marks of civilization or being civilized or being a human being" "is just ordinary human decency." "That all societies require decency, that require decent people, and Nicky Winton is one" "of the most decent people I know and I can pay him no higher compliment." "Anything that is not actually impossible can be done, if one really sets one mind to do it and is determined that it shall be done." "We are familiar with evil of these days." "We are bombarded with it daily on our TVs." "For most of us this violence seems remote, even unreal." "We may be horrified, but hey it is not our problem." "And anyway there's nothing much we can do about it, can we?" "And indeed, we almost never do." "And I'm a reporter who for more than fifty years covered the world wars and other misfortunes." "Amidst of the violence and miseries, that I witnessed I have also seen acts of kindness, compassion and courage." "But there is one such story I missed, my own - the story of how Nicky Winton saved my life and that of so many others." "The question that grips us still is why did he do it?" "Why when the whole world had abandoned us did this man go out of his way to save us and why did he keep silent about it for decades?" "It was a mystery that began to unravel only when this forgotten scrapbook surfaced." "TITLE:" "Nicholas Winton - The PO WER of GOOD" "Until 1988 no one knew of the story, certainly not the hundreds of people who owe their lives to what happened." "All that remained of it was locked away in a memory of a (one man) couple of old men and in this scrapbook." "A scrapbook of photographs of children caught up in a lottery of life and death, of urgent telegrams, pleading letters from desperate parents." "And with them a rush of childhood memories." "Memories of the 1930's - of the pleasures of childhood in Czechoslovakia - the place we all came from." "It was a stable peaceful and tolerant democracy in the heart of Europe." "My family lived in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia." "Well, I mean it was city I grew up." "I took it naturally." "It was a bilingual, multilingual city." "All the signs were in Slovak, in German, in Hungarian." "There were three names " "Bratislava, Pressburg, Pozony." "Life in the city was slow and easy." "There were all sorts of music." "What I remember most vividly are the small things." "Going to a cafe with my father and drinking hot chocolate with whipped cream on top." "It was a pleasant world." "And my memories of the Czech schools were very, very happy." "We had a very active drama department." "Our fore master was extremely lively and very active on Czech radio." "My memories of Czech schooldays are very, very happy." "We went to visit the Carlsbad, which I remember more than my home village of Kodau, where I was born." "We used to go for every Sunday afternoon for the five o'clock tea dance at the Pupp's Hotel on the promenade." "And we saw what the good life or we saw the remnants of the good life of the 30th in Europe before Nazism was born and grew and strength" "in Middle or Central Europe." "Well, you know, even if you were a child in Central Europe, you couldn't but help sense that there was danger, danger to your country and especially danger if you were a Jew." "In a sense I grew up with Hitler." "At first he seemed only a distant danger someone we could joke about imitating his Charlie Chaplin moustache and his odd cowlick hairdo." "You could hear Hitler's voice roaring on the radio." "There would be German minority - Sudeten Germans and yelling:" "Lieber Fuhrer mach uns frei von der Tschechoslowakei" " Dear Fuhrer liberates us from Czechoslovakia / and I could see the Germans getting closer and closer." "On the street I remember being attacked by a couple of kids from Hitlerjugend running away on my way to school, so the tension, the fear was there." "It was talked about at the dinner table." "Both my mother and father read Mein Kamf." "They argued about whether it was possible for Hitler to do what he wrote he was going to do." "My mother believed that it could be done." "My father didn't believe it because the Meisel family spent nearly a thousand years in Czechoslovakia and were more Czech than Jews and more Czech that most of the Czechs." "The Czechs protested Hitler's demands for a chunk of their country the Sudeten borderlands." "Czechoslovakia mobilized to defend itself." "But the Czechs needed help from their allies in the West." "And it wasn't forthcoming." "Here, in the British Parliament and not for that any matter in any other democracy was there any great will to confront Hitler and risk war." "So the British and French prime ministers went to Munich gave up and signed a humiliating deal with Hitler." "So, when Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich and waved that piece of paper that he sold out Czechoslovakia and announced peace in out time a wave of relief" "swept throughout most of Europe, but not in Czechoslovakia, of course." "My family lived in Sudentenland and in 1938 things got so bad that we had to flee." "We took whatever we could and we had to leave everything and we went to Stankov," "and then to Beroun and eventually to Prague." "We had one of the young refugees in our class and they left in such a hurry that..." "they never even took any clothes, not many clothes and her father just scooped her at night in her pyjamas in a blanket and she came to school with no shoes and that really shook me." "I remember during a break" "I went home and took a pair of shoes from my cupboard and I thought that my mother would be very, very crossed that I gave them to this young girl and when I told her about it" "she hugged me and there were tears in her eyes and she said." "Bring Anna back after school and let's see what other clothes we can find for her." "The first pages of the scrapbook and of our story came to be written in December 1938." "You look at the pictures and the list and you have to wonder what made 29 year old Englishman do such a thing." "Why did he compile our list?" "This is the list and here somewhere is my name on it." "If it hadn't been for this list, if it hadn't been for Nicky Winton and handful of people who worked for him," "I certainly wouldn't have been here today." "The world was Nicky Winton's oyster." "He lived in London, he was young, he was single and in the depth of a great depression he had a good job as a stockbroker." "A job that paid well enough for a young man to indulge himself which in 1939 with Christmas approaching he intended to do." "He and a friend Martin Blake should go to Switzerland to ski." "They never made it." "I only went to Prague because we discussed at various times" "if not daily what was happening in Europe." "And if Martin Blake was going to Prague to see a friend of his who was helping to get out various people (refugees)" "He sought it would be of interest to me." "I mean the last thing I thought when I set out from Prague was that I was going to do a job of work." "Hello." "And I met him at hotel Sroubek and next day already I was sent with other people Elena Rathbone and reverend Loslee Lee" "round the various camps where a lot of these refugees were living." "The situations in the camp were extremely bad, it was very cold." "These refugees felt as we felt that their days were numbered before the Germans were going to arrive in Czechoslovakia." "But how could they save themselves, what could they do, where should they go?" "They were stuck." "While Winton was in Prague, he was shaken by a map that he was given." "A map of German plans and ambitions for territorial expansion." "It's from the fall 38 Ein Volk, ein Reich" " Ein fuehrer / One people, one Empire, one Fuhrer," "Gross Deutschland 38  48 and what it showed was that the Germans had ambition to take over the whole Europe." "Nobody had believed it." "In the camps there were all these children and nobody knew what was going to happen to them." "None of the children were being looked after." "And I was told that there was no organization to deal with the children." "So the idea came to me that these children had to be saved." "Everybody in Prague said Look, there is no organization to deal with the children, we can't deal with them, anyway nobody will let the children to go on their own." "If you want to have a go, have go." "And there is nothing that can't be done, if it's fundamentally reasonable." "And he started writing letters;" "help to save the children of this courageous and desperately unfortunate people." "Many of those letters went to the USA." "He even wrote to the White House." "He wrote to President Roosevelt and then several weeks later he got a reply from the American Embassy in London." "And the reply said in effect the United States Government is unable to permit emigration in excess of that provided for by existing emigration laws." "And the number of children who were in urgent need the country for safety was certainly over two thousand." "This is where I had to come down or I came down every morning." "I sat in the corner down there to have my breakfast." "I wasn't sitting there for more than about two minutes before the first people came who wanted to talk to me and find out how they could get their children to England and this went on the whole time I was here." "I mean I was followed round the whole time by German spies." "And I can remember one evening when we always compared notes on what we had done during the day." "And Doreen said to me in German:" "Until that gentleman over there behind the newspaper leaves, we just talk about the weather." "And he got up and walked away." "It seems to us that the Germans wouldn't be doing all that unless they had inferious intentions." "You had all these refugees who were fleeing from Hitler and who were in danger of their lives if Hitler made another move into Czechoslovakia." "Then came the fifteenth of March." "The day when German troops occupied what remained of Czechoslovakia." "I woke off hearing German soldiers marching into our square." "When the commandant of German troops decided to take over the room in our house." "Father refused to agree to speak German only our household." "No." "We shall speak Czech and German only in your presence." "And the commandant spat in my father's face." "I never forget the saliva running down his cheeks." "Winton wrote all over looking for countries to take over his children." "Only two responded positively." "Sweden and his own country Britain." "The rest of the world closed its eyes, its ears, its hearts and its gates." "Nicky Winton started his mission to save the endangered children from scratch (here in London)." "There was no organization." "No existing pipeline." "And he knew that time was running out." "That war was about to come." "From this house on London Hampstead Heath," "Winton conducted his campaign to get the Germans to let the children out, the British Home Office to let them in, to find British families to take them into their homes and to raise the money to make it all possible." "When I say the committee in London it was me and a secretary and a few volunteers." "We had no office or anything, we worked in my house." "The conditions which were laid down for bringing in a child were chiefly that you had a family that were willing and able to look after the child" "until it was seventeen and the fifty pounds which was quite a large sum of money in those days was it to deposit to the authorities " "the Home Office in this case." "The most difficult side was of course was finding a family to take the children." "If somebody said that they wanted to take a child of about eight, and they wanted say a girl, I sent them half a dozen photos of girls" "of about eight and let them choose, which in retrospect can be considered rather a commercial way of dealing with human beings, but it worked because it was quick and speed was the most important" "thing at that time, we thought speed was more important than the politicians did at that moment." "Prague Castle / welcome message of Czech Prime Minister to Reich's Protector" "In Czechoslovakia the persecution of all the Jews was rapidly increasing and with that the number of children seeking to leave the country also grew." "Times were very desperate and my mother realized that in order to save us she would have to send us on our own, so she just organized our departure" "and left us, four children on their own." "My mother was very anxious that we should pursue the possibilities of emigration." "But somehow my father's heart wasn't in it." "Because he knew that there was the whole family there and he couldn't get permits for everyone." "This whole question of leaving to England or America became a reality and it was discussed to the extent that immediate arrangements had to be made to sell the store, to pack all the apartment," "all our worldly goods, if you want to say that, they would take longer, that in the meantime we would go and spend two or three months in England." "Pressure from the parents for us to get their children to England was incredible." "We in London at that time thought that there was going to be a catastrophe at any moment." "And for us time was absolutely essential, we cut all kinds of corners, even having faked passports or travel documents made at some time" "(in Prague), because a Home Office was a bit slow." "Some of the papers were forged, but it was a forgery to bamboozle the Germans, really not to bamboozle the British." "We didn't bring anybody in illegally, we just speed a process up a little." "My parents were among those desperate to send their children abroad." "I remember my mother saying to a friend." "We are going to send our boys to England, just until it blows over you know and to me it seemed" "like a great adventure..." "going to England, you know." "I was send to uncle Sigmund, the dentist who took out all my fillings and put gold into my teeth because my parents thought" "that I would not have no money on my own in England." "So my teeth were filled with family gold." "Here is the contents which was permitted and was actually packed in my suitcase here for instance, it gives details one pair of shoes." "We arrived to the station very early." "I remember wearing a label." "I think we each had two suitcases." "Ok." "And this is the actual suitcase that my parents packed and which I took in 1939 to first to England for a week and then up to Scotland and here is" "the sign, a label from London to Glasgow a here is the label from the Wilson station." "My mother and friend of hers saw me off." "I was conscious my mother was very tense but I didn't understand why." "I remember there was a SS soldier with a swastika standing on the platform and lots of others parents who were seeing their children off." "And there was some delay in a train leaving." "I don't know what the cause of that was." "The departure was really the tension that I sensed without understanding it." "The train was due to leave on Saturday, they used to ring me up in my office say" "Thursday or Friday saying they wanted another thousand pounds, or the train couldn't go." "So it was very hard to arrange and one just had to find money at that time." "I mean with all the children assembled here, all the families waiting for the children to arrive in London." "If children cried." "If they clung to their mothers, it was much worse for their parents." "They couldn't have known that this would be the last time they would ever see their children." "But on the other hand they couldn't have but help, think it." "One agonized mother whose little girl was already aboard took her off and changed her mind again and put her back on the train." "Decades later I would catch myself looking at my own children try to recapture a fraction of a dread that those parents, my parents must have felt." "A final hug, very precious." "As there were the words of love and words of hope." "I never forget the anguish expression on my parents faces at that moment." "It was the first time that their inner feelings came to the surface." "Until then they did very best to mask them." "The steam sort of pouring, was it the morning or the night's mist I don't know, but, I know" "I could not see clearly as we were leaving the station and my eyes were just focused on mother and father." "Because we came from Slovakia my brother and I were not allowed to join the train in Prague." "And so with my father we waited for it here on the platform at Lovosice, then a border station just inside the German's Reich." "The train ran late that night because of the document mix up and as night fell the German station master insisted we go inside." "But not into the waiting room though, because in Hitler's Germany it was closed to Jews." "Instead the station master push away us into the toilets." "And so the last time I saw my father we spent the night beside a smelling urinal inside Hitler's Reich." "On the train it was kind of odd." "Some of the kids cried, my younger brother cried, I had to look after him because my parents told me to look after him." "And others thought I suppose it was a bit of luck, an adventure." "In a train which ran through Germany, just before it crossed the border into Holland, the train stopped and they decided" "to look for all kinds of things, and they came into our compartment and they took out a 6 year old boy things and took his little suitcase because of his hand luggage and turned it outside down like that" "and the poor boy he must have been six years old." "My face must have got completely red." "I know people looked at me and say, what's the matter with you." "I said:" "I don't know." "I don't feel very well." "I remember German police coming on board, when train had stopped." "And then Dutch police came on board and there was the general feeling of immense relaxation that these people were friendly." "And that was the feeling that went through the entire train and everything was opened, windows were opened for the first time" "and we were served white bread." "I never had bread of this kind." "It felt as it was wet." "We were served hot cocoa and bread." "It was white bread." "Of course I was used to dark bread Central European dark bread." "To us white bread was, well what white bread is to me now, it was kind of odd stuff and we came to a Hook of Holland and boarded" "this big ship because all I have seen were the peddle steamers that went up and down the Danube in Bratislava." "That night... as we crossed the English Channel... suspended for a few hours in the calmness of the ship rocking us to sleep I heard voices from nearby cabins singing the Czech national anthem Where is my home..." "...Where is my home." "...Kde domov m_j..." "Kde domov m_j..." "Kde domov m_j..." "...Where is my home." "It was a question that remained unanswered for many of us for years a question that for a few remains unanswered to this day." "Liverpool Street Station." "This is where we arrived in London." "I don't remember the building." "What I do remember is getting off the train." "The fact that you did not have to climb down as you did in Central Europe climb down to the rails, that the platform was even with the train and I was impressed." "Liverpool Street Station." "Arrival of another group of refugee children." "Another sad cargo thrown overboard by a ruthless European temper." "A special effort has been made to help the refugees on Mother's Day." "Then the train arrived and you had up to two hundred, two hundred and fifty children getting out and you had to get the right child to the right family." "And you had to treat it as a business." "When you got the right child to the right family, the family had to sign for the child so that you have some proof of delivery." "That first night in England, my brother and I spent it someone's house in London." "I didn't know whose house it was, all I remember is that for the first time" "I slept under the blanket, the blanket was a kind of tight." "I was used to feather down duvet, which was..." "And I didn't want to disturb the bed." "So I felt sort of strapped in." "I was left standing alone next to a chair with my little rucksack waiting for someone to come and claim me." "When the door opened and there stood this little lady hardly taller then myself, with a big smile from ear to ear, she ran towards me with tears and laughter." "And she flung her arms around me and spoke some words which I did not understand then, but they were:" "You shall be loved." "My parents wrote to my foster aunt and uncle in Glasgow." "We thank you from all our hearts for your great love and care you that surround our child and we only wish from all our hearts that Tommy in his childlike ignorance may not presume upon your kindness by his naughtiness." "Once the children had arrived and were with their new families," "I had no contact with them any more." "I knew that they were being well looked after and some went to the Czechoslovak School in Wales." "We just helped each other." "We all helped each other because we had no mums and dads to do our mending, and we didn't have any fathers to mend our bicycles" "and you volunteered to mend it and I saw I volunteered in return to dawn your socks." "And you know that's how we formed partnerships in our class." "Those years spent at school were among the happiest in my life." "We immediately became involved in the social life of that lady." "She was actually a head mistress of a small private school and it was very religious, in other words all Baptist." "Of course, we had to go church twice every Sunday." "Although, of course, we were Jewish, but that didn't cause any problems to her." "I went to live with a strongly Christian home." "The Bible was read every day." "From that time I wanted to live a Christian life." "And the only other people who objected to what I was doing was when one day a couple of rabbis arrived at my home and said they understood that some of the good Jewish children" "I was bringing over to this country were going to Christian homes and that must stop and I said, well, it won't stop and they said, well, we insist and I said, well, I mean, this is what I am doing" "and if you prefer a dead Jew in Prague to alive one who is being brought up in a Christian home I said that's your problem, not mine." "These youngsters are some of the lucky ones who managed to get out from their country when it was overrun by the Germans." "Many of them have experience of horrors of invasion in their own home." "Few of them know what happened to their fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers." "As Winton kept pressing for his Home Office permits to allow the children to the country, the people at the Home Office were not annoyed sort of saying:" "What's you hurry?" "Nothing's gonna happen." "Well, Nicky Winton knew better." "He knew that the end was nearing, that things has become urgent and that he had to work fast enough to get more children out." "We had organized eight transports from Prague." "We had quite a few thousand children that wanted to come." "For the beginning of September we had arranged a transport which would have comprised 250 children." "All the preparations had been made and then suddenly..." "We older ones were allowed to stay until nine o'clock and listen to the news." "And that was the first time that the radio announced what was happening to the Jews in Czechoslovakia." "I had obviously already left Prague by 1942 when Jews had to wear stars of David their friends began to walk on the opposite side of the streets and to avoid all contact." "For integrated Jews" "I think it was a great shock and disappointment that society didn't stand by them a bit more." "We learnt about the concentration camps and the possibility that our parents might have been taken to them." "Most of us lived under the illusion that perhaps they escaped the transports, that perhaps they were still at home." "The greatest regret was that our biggest transport which was two hundred fifty children which was due to live at the beginning of September was cancelled because war started." "And none of those children survived." "Nothing that happened prior to the war starting was really of any importance any more." "What was done was done, what couldn't be done, couldn't be done." "Once you can't stop the war and there is a war, you are supposed to go to the defence of your country and I joined the RAF." "All through the war none of us had any news of our parents." "After the war ended in forty five, many of us came back to Czechoslovakia looking for them." "I came here to Prague to the building behind me which served as a clearing house for separated families." "Inside wall upon wall filled with notices put up by people looking for their missing loves ones." "Of my parents though not a trace." "I know they were deported to Poland by the Nazis but to this day" "I am not certain how they came to die." "And I have a letter that was sent a few days before my family was taken to concentration camp." "And when I think it's very difficult..." "...that my mother was a little older" "than my daughter." "I realized that we were not going to see our parents again." "I don't know it's very difficult for me excuse me." "I always believed that family is the most important thing." "And someone I believe is looking at us." "I am sorry..." "I don't know how to say." "Everything we do down here" "is somehow being recorded, not only on your camera." "We found almost none of our family or close relatives still alive, we scattered all over the world, but wherever we went we formed" "new families, we developed new homes and we started life over anew." "I have got a clue where all these seven hundred children were." "I wasn't attached with any of them." "For me it was an episode." "And it was something that happens, so many more important, to me more important things happened in the meantime." "All his he's been involved in helping the community, in various charities, he's been most recently involved in England with Abbeyfield, which is an old people's network of homes, and at the age of eighty five he was attending one" "of the old people's parties." "And was most distressed to be thought of as one of the old people." "He is very keen on his gardening and he spends a lot of time in the garden, but he is a very domesticated husband." "He does a lot of helping out in the house." "I get annoyed because he is very untidy." "I am not all that tidy, but he is really very untidy." "I am fairly happy with Greta, with what I've done, what we do together," "Fairly." "I like that." "Very, very happy." "He's very, very nice." "I like him a lot." "I am one of the fortunate few who lived." "But for fifty years I didn't know how it came to be, that, when all around me, so many died, my parents, family and friends" "and millions of others, how it came to be that I was spared." "Until this scrapbook surfaced in the late eighties then I knew." "The scrapbook and its story gathered dust for decades in the Winton's attic until one day Nicky's wife Greta found it, opened it, became fascinated and yet was puzzled." "And so fifty years after it happened Nicky Winton finally told his wife what he had so long kept secret." "It was a very small of his life and he had forgotten about it." "Until we found the papers, and so there was no reason why he should talk about that." "I suppose there are quite a number of things which husbands don't tell their wives." "And I've got the famous book that is here." "This is actually not the book in itself, but it is a perfect facsimile of the book and a list of names and addresses." "There were very simple, they were Czech names, most of them followed by very ordinary English address" "like 6..." "Cambulance St." "It was enormously moving and I've got very excited about it, so I wrote to this six hundred- - forty seven addresses." "And out of these addresses we got something like two hundred ten, twenty answers, most of them had no idea at all" "of the existence of Winton." "I didn't believe it, OK." "But this lady said to me, what's your name?" "So I said Pinkasovitch." "She took this file and I see my name in there Pinkasovitch." "When I saw it, I can't tell you how I felt, how intense..." "I had goose bumps all over..." "I mean all these years, fifty years..." "Nobody knew who masterminded our rescue, nobody knew a thing and that out of the blue I was asked to take part in a TV show "That's life" where to my joy oh, such fulfilment," "I came face, face to face with a man who saved my life." "I hadn't been told in advance what was going to happen." "I was summoned to the studio." "...and I became part of this program." "I was going to meet for the first time since the outbreak of war with children that I brought over so many years before." "This is his scrapbook." "There are all kinds of fascinating pictures in it." "Perhaps you can see this is a picture of Nicholas Winton himself with one of the children he rescued." "Look at the very back of the scrapbook." "Fascinating thing in it." "All the letters." "In fact here is the list of all the children." "This is Vera Diamant." "Now Vera Gissing." "We did find her name on his list." "Vera Gissing is with us tonight," "Hello Vera, and I should tell you are actually sitting next to Nicholas Winton." "Thank you." "Thank you." "I wore this around my neck and this is the actual pass that we were given to come to England." "And I am another of the children that you saved." "Can I ask is there anyone in our audience tonight who owes their life to Nicholas Winton." "If so, could you stand up please?" "In order to express a certain amount of gratitude for what was done to me, I have to try and help other people" "in anyway I can personally do." "I went to the Philippines to help people in the jungle we adopted two children we sponsored refugees from Russia and Eritrea." "You help people." "I live today in a place where I have the opportunity to help people." "Now I work two days a week in children's hospital as a volunteer." "We've got to live as best as we can." "We've got to contribute something to the world and live in a way my parents would be proud of." "It's a great privilege to be here." "To be able to try to influence politics, to had a chance to be a government minister which is a tremendous thing." "I wish my parents live to know about it." "So it's very lucky for me." "I've been very lucky indeed and I hope I made some contribution." "I think Winton's story is quite unusual." "In 1938 he had an intuition and not many people had that intuition, that here was really dangerous situation endangering lives of people" "which nobody recognized at that time." "He felt he should do something for these children." "And in the moment when you start to do it and you have some small victory then are looking for a bigger." "As my children are grandparents now, that makes me a great, great father and I don't feel as old as that, quite frankly." "It's curious in a way I come here to Prague for a week, and I seem to be very important, and it's in all the newspapers, and I shall go home and nobody knows anything about the story" "and I shall be working in my garden, and that would be very nice." "You know I believe, that one of the highest marks of civilization or being civilized or being a human being" "is just ordinary human decency." "That all societies require decency, that require decent people, and Nicky Winton is one" "of the most decent people I know and I can pay him no higher compliment." "Anything that is not actually impossible can be done, if one really sets one mind to do it and is determined that it shall be done."