Sir Nicholas George Winton was a British stockbroker and humanitarian who helped to rescue Jewish children who were at risk of being murdered by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Born to German-Jewish parents who had immigrated to Britain at the beginning of the 20th century, Winton assisted in the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II. On a brief visit to Czechoslovakia, he helped compile a list of children needing rescue and, returning to Britain, he worked to fulfill the legal requirements of bringing the children to Britain and finding homes and sponsors for them.
This operation was later known as the Czech Kindertransport.
Winton in Prague on 10 October 2007
Winton visiting Prague in October 2007
Commemorative event, in July 2015, at the Prague Main Railway Station sculpture
Statue at Prague main railway station, by Flor Kent, unveiled on 1 September 2009
The Kindertransport was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place in 1938–1939 during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust that was to come. The programme was supported, publicised, and encouraged by the British government, which waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government placed no numerical limit on the programme; it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, by which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country.
Young refugees of the first Kindertransport after their arrival at Harwich, Essex, in the early morning of 2 December 1938
Jewish refugee children on their arrival in London on the Warszawa
1939 issued Identity Document for travelling to the UK, used by a child on the Kindertransport
Hope Square plaque