Sir Nicholas Winton may have saved even more Jewish children from Nazis

6 comments

1. ***From The Telegraph:***

   [Sir Nicholas Winton](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/19/saved-from-the-nazis-kindertransport-survivors-remember-sir-nich/) is celebrated for rescuing 669 Jewish children from the Nazi regime, but he may have saved even more lives, new research suggests.

   The stockbroker organised Kindertransport trains to bring children to Britain from Czechoslovakia before the country was overwhelmed by Germany.

   His story was largely forgotten until in 1988, when he was famously surprised by the people he had saved during [That’s Life hosted by Dame Esther Rantzen](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/25/sir-anthony-hopkins-sir-nicholas-winton-dame-esther-rantzen/).

   This moment and his work were captured in the 2023 film [One Life starring Sir Anthony Hopkins](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2023/10/12/one-life-review-anthony-hopkins/).

   It has now emerged that Sir Nicholas may have saved even more lives from murderous Nazi rule than he has been credited for, by bringing children to the UK on a previously unknown 1939 flight.

   Details of the flight have been discovered in the unpublished diaries of fellow humanitarians who worked with Sir Nicholas to extract children from Prague on the eve of the Second World War.

   Three documented flights were made before the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia, but a fourth life-saving journey organised by Sir Nicholas has come to light, according to new research.

   It has been suggested that there may have been even more transports which have not been officially recorded.

   Winton’s grandson Laurence Watson told The Telegraph: “Nicky and his tireless colleagues were motivated solely by a determination to help those in danger – to do what they could in the face of a fast-approaching catastrophe.

   “In so doing, they showed us what moral courage looks like. While we celebrate Nicky, his message is simple: what can you do to help people in need.”

   ***Read more:*** [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/07/sir-nicholas-winton-saved-more-children-from-nazis/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/07/sir-nicholas-winton-saved-more-children-from-nazis/)

2. If someone has come up with a number then most likely it’s what is undeniably verified.

   People like him, and all the other who worked on systems such as the Kindertransport, will have done so much it’ll be impossible to document and attribute everything.

3. And here we go: following the avalanche of “Muslims bad” articles in the RW press, here’s a “Jews good” article. It’s so transparent. Mr Winton, and both demographics deserve better. People are not political gambling chips.

4. Misread that as Nicholas Witchell at first. Was deeply confused

5. When people like Mr Winton were risking their lives, the Nazis were calling Jewish people “animals”, “cockroaches” and “vermin”.

   Pictures of the corpses of European aid workers have recently been widely distributed across Israeli social media labelling them as “cockroaches” and the Palestinians have repeatedly been branded as “animals” or “less than animals”

   Indeed, when the Warsaw ghetto uprising happened Himmler made this statement:

   >We shall finish them off…Warsaw will be liquidated; and this city, which is the intellectual capital of a sixteen to seventeen million-strong nation that has blocked our path to the east for seven hundred years, ever since the first battle of Tannenberg, will have ceased to exist.

   Now consider the fact Israeli ministers have, over the last few months, suggested Gaza should be “flattened” completely and even hit with a nuclear bomb. Over 60% of the civilian infrastructure has already been destroyed and an estimated 18billion dollars worth of civilian housing and infrastructure damage done.

   **On the 1st of August 1944, the order was given to level Warsaw to the ground, and a subsequent order stated: ” “every citizen is to be killed including men, women, and children.””**

   The Israeli president Isaac Herzog recently claimed that there were no civilians in Gaza, stating:

   **”It is an entire nation out there that is responsible..It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved.”**

   But what was the result of the brutal response to the Warsaw uprising?

   *The opening attack by the AK and the subsequent German counterattack on August 5, 1944, had fallen short of their goals.* ***Far more civilians had been killed than combatants****, yet the fighting relentlessly continued.*

   Does this sound familiar?

   To celebrate Mr Winton’s heroism is completely empty if we don’t learn to identify the patterns of action, language, dehumanisation, and propaganda stylings that were used in the past.

   There’s a really powerful message from a Holocaust survivor, Stephen Kapos, on what’s happening in Gaza now: [“They use the sufferings of the holocaust to justify the present massacres”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3xuIdVjtiI)

   More on Warsaw Ghetto uprising: [https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/german-response-warsaw-uprising](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/german-response-warsaw-uprising)

6. This was one hero that didn’t wear cape. One of the greatest heroes in modern history. Truly amazing guy. RIP.