Sunday, November 24, 2013

669 Worlds

Sir Nicholas Winton pooh-poohs the idea, which is hardly surprising. If any nation could pooh-pooh, shouldn’t it be the British?
So Winton really thinks the credit should go to Trevor Chadwick or Martin Blake or the Dutchwoman Gertruida Wijsmuller-Meier, and there may be something in that. Winton, after all, only spent three weeks in Prague, sitting at a dining room table in his hotel room overlooking Wenceslas Square, and interviewing the (mostly) Jewish parents who were desperate to get their children out of Czechoslovakia. Hitler had been given the Sudetenland, and everybody with a brain knew—he wouldn’t stop there.
And there were other organizations getting German and Austrian kids out to safety—it was called the Kindertransport, and the British had raised half a million pounds for the effort. But in Czechoslovakia? Nothing.
So Martin Blake called on Nicholas Winton, a 28-year old London stockbroker, to cancel his ski vacation in Switzerland, and come to Prague instead. There, he found families not just from Prague but from Slovenia; so desperate were they to flee, they were living in camps, hoping to arrange transport out.
In fact, the list would grow to 5,000 children, and there were the predictable problems. First, what governments would take them? After Kristallnacht, the two-night pogrom in November of 1938 in which Jewish stores and synagogues were torched, the British and Swedish governments opened their doors to people under eighteen. The rest of the world, including the United States? Cold shoulder.
Money—kids had to have 50 pounds on deposit to assure repatriation. And 50 pounds then was the equivalent of about 3500 dollars today. Many of the parents were refugees living in camps; they barely had enough money for a meal.
So Trevor Chadwick took note and was told—nobody is doing anything, have a go at it. He opened an office, word spread, and hundreds of parents were outside on the street, desperate to hand over their child to a stranger. And the account of Chadwick by one author is fascinating; here’s Dorit Bader Whiteman:
He certainly was a superman.  Tall, handsome and with striking Nordic look… At the time, though, it seemed as if Trevor Chadwick had singlehandedly killed the dragon and was wafting me away. I was accepted at once…. My stout little mother planted herself firmly in front of Chadwick, addressing a speech of thanks to his navel (he being much taller than she). She liked to air her English, and I suspect she thanked him from the bottom of her heart. Trevor Chadwick shuffled his feet.
Later, Bader Whiteman wrote that the prevailing feeling on the trains going out to Holland, where they would ferry to England, was not sorrow but excitement. The parents had gone and spent their last money—in many cases—on new clothes. And they had told the children—we’ll join you soon, maybe in weeks, perhaps in months. But what a wonderful time you’ll have in England.
England, where Winton had returned, and where he resumed his day job as a stockbroker. But in the evenings and into the night, he was arranging for foster parents, putting photos of children everywhere he could think of, begging newspapers to donate advertising, and lastly, dealing with the paperwork. Not altogether uncreatively; here’s his comment:
"Officials at the Home Office worked very slowly with the entry visas. We went to them urgently asking for permits, only to be told languidly, 'Why rush, old boy? Nothing will happen in Europe.' This was a few months before the war broke out. So we forged the Home Office entry permits."  
Seven “shipments” of children were sent, the eighth was to leave on 1 September 1939—the day broke out, and Hitler invaded Poland. Here’s the account:
"Within hours of the announcement, the train disappeared. None of the 250 children aboard was seen again. We had 250 families waiting at Liverpool Street that day in vain. If the train had been a day earlier, it would have come through. Not a single one of those children was heard of again, which is an awful feeling."
An awful feeling, yes—but there is the consolation that 669 children were saved—thanks to the efforts of Chadwick, Winton, Blake and others. In fact, one child stated that the men are responsible for the survival of a generation of Czech Jews, since almost no one else survived the camps.
Winton joined the air force, and fought for five years. Then, he came home, put his diary of the efforts to save the children in his attic, and never mentioned it to anyone, including his wife. It was she, in fact, who found the diary, and learned of the story.
Winton wears a ring with a quote from the Talmud: save one life, save the world.
Winton saved 669 worlds.



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