Nicholas Winton lived in London. His parents Rudolf and Barbara Wertheim were from German-Jewish families. Due to anti-German sentiment, the family changed their name to Winton in 1938. Nicholas Winton was a stockbroker and a member of the Labour Party.
At the beginning of 1939 he went to join his friend Martin Blake in Prague, where Blake was supporting the British Committee for Refugees from Czechslovakia (BCRC). Winton helped to fly 50 refugee children from Czechoslovakia to London and Sweden. Back in London, Winton and other helpers organized eight train transports of a total of 669 mainly Jewish children, from March 1939. They found a foster family and paid a guarantee for every child. Trevor Chadwick aided them from Prague.
When the war began on September 1, 1939, no more trains were allowed to leave the country. During the war, Winton worked for the Red Cross and then the Royal Air Force. From 1946 he worked for the International Refugee Organization, then for an international bank. He married in 1948 and had two children. In 2002 he was knighted by Queen Elisabeth II; in 2014 he received the highest Czech honor for his rescues.
Newspaper report on the arrival in London of 20 refugee children flown out of Prague on January 12, 1939 with the aid of the BCRC and the Barbican Mission to the Jews, published in the Daily Telegraph of January 13, 1939. Source: Sir Nicholas Winton Memorial Trust, Maidenhead
List of the eight kindertransports organized by Winton’s aid network, with the costs incurred, October 2, 1939. Source: Sir Nicholas Winton Memorial Trust, Maidenhead
Scrap book with letters, photos, and reports for Nicholas Winton, compiled by W.M. Loewinsohn and other kindertransport helpers, late 1939. Source: Sir Nicholas Winton Memorial Trust, Maidenhead
Nicholas Winton with Hans Beck, one of the rescued Jewish children, at Ruzyně Airport in Prague before Beck’s flight to London, January 12, 1939. Source: Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, 8893/1
Nicholas Wertheim (later Winton, far right) with his family in the garden of their home in the London district of West Hampstead, around 1920. Left to right: Winton’s father Rudolf, brother Robert, grandmother, sister Charlotte, and mother Barbara. Source: Sir Nicholas Winton Memorial Trust, Maidenhead
