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.
