Sir Nicholas George Winton MBE was a British banker and humanitarian. He established an organisation to rescue children at risk from Nazi Germany. Winton supervised the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II. He found homes for the children and arranged for their safe passage to Britain. This operation was later known as the Czech Kindertransport. In 2003, Winton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to humanity. He died in 2015 at the age of 106 in his sleep at his home in London.
About Nicholas Winton in brief
Sir Nicholas George Winton MBE was a British banker and humanitarian. He established an organisation to rescue children at risk from Nazi Germany. Winton supervised the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II. He found homes for the children and arranged for their safe passage to Britain. This operation was later known as the Czech Kindertransport. In 2003, Winton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to humanity. On 28 October 2014, he was awarded the highest honour of the Czech Republic, the Order of the White Lion, by Czech President Miloš Zeman. He died in 2015 at the age of 106 in his sleep at his home in London. He was described as ‘an ardent socialist who became close to Labour Party luminaries Aneurin Bevan, Jennie Lee and Tom Driberg’ Winton became part of a left-wing circle opposed to appeasement and concerned about the dangers posed by the Nazis. In 1938, following Kristallnacht in Nazi-ruled Germany, the House of Commons approved a measure to allow the entry into Britain of refugees younger than 17, provided they had a place to stay and a warranty of £50 was deposited for their eventual return to their own country. The British press celebrated him and dubbed him the \”British Schindler. ’ Winton spent one month in Prague and left in January 1939, six weeks before the German occupation of Czechoslov Slovakia. He had hoped to compete in the following Olympics, but the games were cancelled because of the war.
His mother worked with him to place the children in homes and later host them in Harwich and North Eastern Railway. Throughout the summer of 1939, he placed photographs of the names of the families in London and Harwich. After the first crossing of the Netherlands, the children went to Germany, where they found marech for them and returned to Germany. The children’s parents would perish in concentration camp in Auschwitz, many of whose parents would later die in the Holocaust. He worked with his mother to find homes in Britain for many of the children, and many of their parents would perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp. He also helped to find a place for them in the North East Railway, which operated the steamers to Harwich, which later operated the Harwich train. He left without qualifications, attending night school while volunteering at the Midland Bank. He then went to Hamburg, where he worked at Behrens Bank, followed by Wasserman Bank in Berlin. In 1931, he moved to France and worked for the Banque Nationale de Crédit in Paris. Returning to London, he became a broker at the London Stock Exchange. In 1923, he entered Stowe School, which had just opened. He was selected for the British team in 1938, and was selected as a fencer for the London Olympics. He went on to become an outstanding fencer.
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