Martin Blake was a member of the British Labour Party and was a teacher at Westminster School in London. He observed the increasing persecution of Jews in Germany with concern. Shortly before Christmas 1938, he called his friend and party comrade Nicholas Winton to call off the vacation they had planned over New Year. Instead, he asked Winton to come to Prague. Blake was working there with mainly British volunteers for the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC). Headed by Doreen Warriner, the BCRC helped refugees who had come to Prague in their thousands after the German occupation of the Sudentenland and Czechoslovakia in 1938. They took people to safe countries via Poland, especially those wanted by the German Security Police and their families. Blake introduced Winton to the BCRC’s work. In 1939, Winton organized eight transports, bringing a total of 669 mainly Jewish children and teenagers to Britain. Blake was also active in the British Council, an organization working to foster international relations.
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
