Rotarian Sir Nicholas Winton, former President and member of the Rotary Club of Maidenhead, has sadly passed away at the age of 106.
Sir Nicholas, who has become known as “the British Oskar Schindler” saved the lives of 669 children from Nazi tyranny and slaughter in Czechoslovakia in 1939 by arranging the ‘kindertransport’ from Prague in eight trains over 6 months and finding host families for them in England.
A statement from the Rotary Club of Maidenhead, of which he was a member, reported the death “with much sadness” of a man they acknowledged as “probably the oldest active Rotarian in the world”.
Winton organised the safe passage of the children when he feared they would be sent to concentration camps, and he also helped find them foster families in England. But he told no one of his war time actions for half-a-century – not even his wife and children.
His extraordinary humanitarian effort only became known in 1988 when his wife, Grete, found an old briefcase in the attic with lists of children and letters from their parents. Believing that the children themselves might have a need to know missing details of their early lives, Grete took the letters to a Holocaust historian. A newspaper article was published and Esther Ransen told the emotional story on That’s Life!, when the entire audience was made up of the ‘children’, now well in to their middle-age, all meeting Sir Nicholas for the first time since they were put on the trains in Prague station or met at Liverpool Street on arrival in England.
From a German-Jewish family, he received a knighthood in 2003 and a Hero of the Holocaust medal at Downing Street in 2010. Last year he was awarded the Order of the White Lion by the Czech president, Milos Zeman, at a ceremony in Prague.
The British prime minister, David Cameron, said: “The world has lost a great man. We must never forget Sir Nicholas Winton’s humanity in saving so many children from the Holocaust.”
