Nicholas Winton
Sir Nicholas George Winton, MBE (born Wertheim; 19 May 1909 – 1 July 2015) was a British humanitarian who established an organization to rescue children at risk from Nazi Germany. Born to German-Jewish parents who had emigrated to Britain, Winton supervised the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II. Winton found homes for the children and arranged for their safe passage to Britain. This operation was later known as the Czech Kindertransport (German for "children's transport").
His work went unnoticed by the world for over 50 years, until 1988 when he was invited to the BBC television programme That's Life!, where he was reunited with several of the children he had saved. The British press celebrated him and dubbed him the "British Schindler." In 2003, Winton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for "services to humanity, in saving Jewish children from Nazi Germany occupied Czechoslovakia". On 28 October 2014, he was awarded the highest honour of the Czech Republic, the Order of the White Lion (1st class), by Czech President Miloš Zeman. He died in 2015 at the age of 106.
Early life
Winton was born on 19 May 1909 in Hampstead, London to Jewish parents Rudolph Wertheim (1881–1937), a bank manager, and his wife Barbara (née Wertheimer, 1888–1978),as the middle-born of their three children. His elder sister was Charlotte (1908–2001) and the younger brother, Robert (1914–2009) His parents were German Jews who had moved to London two years earlier. The family name was Wertheim, but they changed it to Winton in an effort at integration. They also converted to Christianity, and Winton was baptised
In 1923, Winton entered Stowe School, which had just opened.[12] 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.[8] In 1931, he moved to France and worked for the Banque Nationale de Crédit in Paris. He also earned a banking qualification in France. Returning to London, he became a broker at the London Stock Exchange. Though a stockbroker, Winton was also "an ardent socialist who became close to Labour Party luminaries Aneurin Bevan, Jennie Lee and Tom Driberg."Through another socialist friend, Martin Blake, Winton became part of a left-wing circle opposed to appeasement and concerned about the dangers posed by the Nazis.
At school, he had become an outstanding fencer and was selected for the British team in 1938. He had hoped to compete in the next Olympics, but the games were cancelled because of the war.
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