Sir Nicholas Winton
Raphael Cohen-Almagor
Director, MESC, University of Hull; Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC; President, Association for Israel Studies; Fellow, IIAS
'One Life' is playing in cinemas. It tells the story of Winton who, in December 1938, at the age of 29, cancelled a planned skiing holiday after being urged by a friend, Martin Blake, to go to Prague to see the dire situation there. The area had become overwhelmed with refugees after Germany had annexed the Sudetenland, a mostly German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia. In Czechoslovakia, Winton was sent by Doreen Warriner to see several refugee camps, was deeply disturbed by what he saw, and decided to do something. Winton returned to London and together with his mum and a small group of friends launched a campaign to save as many children as was possible. He approached the London authorities and the media, organized visas for the children, raised the money to pay the visa fee of ￡50 for each child, secured foster families for them in Britain, and with colleagues in Prague identified the children and arranged their travel to Britian. During a period of nine months in 1939, Winton rescued 669 children from Czechoslovakia. The last train, with the largest group of more than 250 children, was unable to travel as it was scheduled to leave Prague on 1 September 1939, and the Nazis caught them prior departure. Winton believed that ‘none of the 250 children on board was heard of again’. After the war, the majority of the children discovered that their parents had been murdered in the Holocaust.?You can read some of their stories at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/13/world/europe/nicholas-winton-children-saved.html
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Sir Nicholas’ story became publicly known in 1988, when the BBC hosted him.
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The movie is very moving. It is well done and well-acted, touching the hearts of the audience, and my heart as well. Many people around me wept their tears. Anthony Hopkins’ performance as the older Winton is superb, an Oscar performance.
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'One Life' is **** in Rafi’s scale.
领英推荐
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See Sir Nicholas Winton - BBC Programme "That's Life" aired in 1988,
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Read One Life: The True Story of Sir Nicholas Winton, https://www.nicholaswinton.com/biography
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