Hugs Up in Heaven, As Nicholas Winton Goes to His Reward

I imagine cheering crowds at the gates of Heaven this morning, welcoming Sir Nicholas Winton to his eternal reward. Winton, you may recall, was a stockbroker and humanitarian who saved 669 Jewish children during the Holocaust, finding homes for them in Britain.

His obituary in the L.A. Times explains:

Winton arranged trains to carry children from Nazi-occupied Prague to Britain, battling bureaucracy at both ends and saving them from almost certain death — and then kept quiet about his exploits for a half-century.

The BBC, calling Winton “the British Schindler,” rounds out the story:

Alarmed by the influx of refugees from the Sudetenland region recently annexed by Germany, Winton and his friend feared — correctly — that Czechoslovakia soon would be invaded by the Nazis and Jewish residents from there would be sent to concentration camps.

While supporters in Britain were working to get Jewish intellectuals and communists out of Czechoslovakia, no one was trying to save the children, so Winton took the task upon himself.

Returning to Britain, Winton persuaded British officials to accept children, as long as foster homes were found and a 50-pound guarantee was paid for each one to ensure they had enough money to return home later. Their stays were only expected to be temporary.

In total, Sir Nicholas arranged eight trains to transport Jewish children to safety in Britain. He died on Wednesday, July 1, exactly 76 years after the departure of a train from occupied Prague to Britain carrying the largest number of children–241.

His heroism came to light only in 1988, when his wife Grete found a scrapbook in their attic which revealed details regarding travel arrangements and lists of children saved, including their parents’ names and the names and addresses of the families which took them in. That same year, the British television program That’s Life! tracked down 80 of those survivors who owed their lives to Winton; and they surprised him when he and his wife were in the audience for an episode of the show. The show’s host, Esther Rantzen, asked whether any in the audience owed their lives to Winton; and more than two dozen people in the audience rose and applauded.

Today, Nicholas Winton died peacefully at Wexham Hospital in Slough, with his daughter Barbara and her two children at his side. He was 106.

Rest in peace, Sir Winston. May God welcome you into his kingdom where, with all the angels and saints (and all the forsaken children of Prague), you will live forevermore.

Image:  Nicholas Winton in Prague.  By cs:User:Li-sung (Self-photographed) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons