RELEASED to little fanfare last month and almost lost amid the torrent of summer blockbusters, was “Nicky’s Family”, a fascinating new documentary about Nicholas Winton, a man dubbed ‘The British Schindler’ for his work in rescuing mostly Jewish children from the Nazis just before World War II.
Working mainly on his own and without official government help, Winton helped secure the escape of 669 Czech and Slovak children to homes in Britain – helping them avoid almost certain death in Nazi camps.
The documentary received rave reviews from critics and is still playing at a handful of movie theatres in Southern California, one of which – the Music Hall in Beverly Hills, will host a special Q&A this Sunday (August 11th), with Dave Lux – one of the children Winton rescued, following the 5pm screening of the movie.
Winton, who is now 103, did not talk about his exploits following the war, and his life might well have been forgotten had his wife not found a suitcase in the attic, full of documents and transport plans. As he result Winton was knighted by the Queen and honored by the U.S. House of Representatives with H.R. 583, a bill recognizing his remarkable achievements.
Nicholas Winton was born in Hampstead in 1909 to parents of German Jewish origin who had moved to London two years earlier. A career in banking took him to Germany in the early 1930s where he became increasingly alarmed at the rise of Nazism. After a spell working as a stock-broker at the London Stock Exchange Winton was about to travel to Switzerland just before Christmas in 1938 for a skiing holiday, when he decided instead to travel to Prague, Czechoslovakia, to help a friend who was involved in Jewish refugee work and had called him asking for his help. During his visit Winton visited refugee camps filled to capacity with Jews and political opponents from the Sudetenland.
After Munich, Winton had been certain that the Germans would occupy the rest of Bohemia and Moravia before long. He had been alarmed further by the violence against the Jewish community in Germany and Austria during the Kristallnachtriots in November 1938. When he heard of subsequent efforts of Jewish agencies in Britain to rescue German and Austrian Jewish children on the so-called Kindertransport, an effort that eventually brought about 10,000 unaccompanied children to safety in Great Britain, Winton summoned a small group of people to organize a similar rescue operation for children imperiled by the impending German dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939.
Winton immediately established a Children’s Section and, using the name of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, initially without authorization, began taking applications from parents at his hotel in Prague. As his operation expanded, he opened an office in central Prague. Soon, thousands of parents lined up outside of Winton’s Children Section’s office seeking a safe haven for their children.
Winton returned to London to organize the rescue operation on that end. He raised money to fund the transports of the children and the £50 per child guarantee demanded by the British government to fund the children’s eventual departure from Britain. He also had to find British families willing to care for the refugee children. By day, Winton worked at his regular job on the Stock Exchange, and then devoted late afternoons and evenings to his rescue efforts.
The first transport of children organized by Winton left Prague by plane for London on March 14, 1939, the day before the Germans occupied the Czech lands. After the Germans established a Protectorate in the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, Winton organized seven further transports that departed by rail out of Prague and across Germany to the Atlantic Coast, then by ship across the English Channel to Britain. At the train station in London, British foster parents waited to collect the children. The last trainload of children left Prague on August 2, 1939. Rescue activities ceased when Germany invaded Poland and Britain declared war in Germany in early September 1939.
One of the 669 children Winton rescued was the filmmaker Karel Reisz, the director of the landmark British dramas This Sporting Life and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
Many of the children Winton rescued have formed lifelong bonds and, under the blanket name of “Nick’s Family”, continue to devote their lives to charitable and humanitarian work.
Nicky’s Family is showing at the Laemmle’s Royal Theatre 11523 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Los Angeles (ends August 9th), the Laemmle Playhouse 7, 673 East Colorado Blvd. Pasadena through August 11th and the Laemmle Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, Sunday at Noon at 5pm.
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