Sir Nicholas Winton may have saved even more Jewish children from Nazis
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Sir Nicholas Winton is celebrated for rescuing 669 Jewish children from the Nazi regime, but he may have saved even more lives, new research suggests.
The stockbroker organised Kindertransport trains to bring children to Britain from Czechoslovakia before the country was overwhelmed by Germany.
His story was largely forgotten until in 1988, when he was famously surprised by the people he had saved during That’s Life hosted by Dame Esther Rantzen.
This moment and his work were captured in the 2023 film One Life starring Sir Anthony Hopkins.
It has now emerged that Sir Nicholas may have saved even more lives from murderous Nazi rule than he has been credited for, by bringing children to the UK on a previously unknown 1939 flight.
Details of the flight have been discovered in the unpublished diaries of fellow humanitarians who worked with Sir Nicholas to extract children from Prague on the eve of the Second World War.
Three documented flights were made before the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia, but a fourth life-saving journey organised by Sir Nicholas has come to light, according to new research.
It has been suggested that there may have been even more transports which have not been officially recorded.
Winton’s grandson Laurence Watson told The Telegraph: “Nicky and his tireless colleagues were motivated solely by a determination to help those in danger – to do what they could in the face of a fast-approaching catastrophe.
“In so doing, they showed us what moral courage looks like. While we celebrate Nicky, his message is simple: what can you do to help people in need.”
In an unseen diary of Sir Nicholas’ colleague in Prague, Doreen Warriner wrote: “On the 10th March, a special plane took my children from the YWCA to England, through Winton’s organisation by now in charge of Trevor Chadwick.”
In a second newly studied diary by Warriner, she also references this “special plane”.
Warriner was head of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia working to get children out of the country, and Chadwick was a schoolteacher who remained in Prague to organise Kindertransport while Sir Nicholas secured visas and foster families in Britain.
Trains destined for Holland with onward sea passage to England were the primary way to extract children from central Europe, and Sir Nicholas helped arrange eight in total, which ran from March through to September 1939.
A planned ninth was prevented from leaving by the outbreak of war in September. Only two children intended as passengers survived the conflict, during which Nazi ideology and racial laws were ratcheted into the systematic murder of the Holocaust.
Flights were also organised in the early stages, on Jan 1, and during the first week of March 1939, while Czech leaders were being bullied into capitulation by Adolf Hitler.
Warriner’s unseen diary has been studied by author and historian Edward Abel Smith, who noticed a flight recorded on March 10, 1939, just days before the Nazis turned Czechoslovakia into their protectorate on March 15.
Given the 20-seat capacity of another flight that left Prague for Britain, this flight may mean that Sir Nicholas’s work helped ensure another 20 youngsters were taken to safety, and there may have been more.
Mr Smith said: “It seems likely that there could be even more transports that Winton and his team organised that we do not know about.”
He added: “Given that five days later the Nazis occupied the country, thousands of records were desperately destroyed, so it is somewhat unsurprising that these records might have been lost.”
This appears to be confirmed in the diaries of Robert Stopford, a government official based in Prague, who wrote in his diary in 1938: “Emigration had been going on with a trainload which left Prague on 9th March and a planeload of children on Friday, 10th”
Sir Nicholas was only 30 in 1939 when he cancelled a planned skiing holiday to travel to Prague on the invitation of Warriner’s organisation, which was busily aiding refugees to flee the encroaching Nazi regime.
As well as organising transportation on the ground, he had to travel to Britain to secure visas and foster homes that could guarantee £50, £2,500 today, for each child. This was a condition of entry for the UK government.
It is understood that while Sir Nicholas may well have helped arrange further transport for children, they were not counted among those saved by his operation.
Steve Watson, Sir Nicholas’ son-in-law and trustee of the Sir Nicholas Winton Memorial Trust, told The Telegraph: “We do know about the flights although more details have appeared from Doreen’s diary.
“Sir Nicholas was always adamant that the flights were not part of his scheme: the obtaining of visas and guarantees.
“However it would appear that he and Trevor did organise early flights.
“The list along with information we have from families does give some clues and is subject to further research.”
Many of those whom were saved were among the audience of That’s Life in 1988.
Winton and his wife were seated in the audience for the episode when Dame Esther began explaining his achievements, before asking if any audience members were among the largely Jewish children he saved – and asked them to stand if they were.
Two dozen people sat around Winton in the crowd then stood and applauded. When Dame Esther asked if any of those watching her show were the children or grandchildren of those saved, the entire audience rose to their feet, as their saviour wept.
Sir Nicholas died aged 106 in 2015.
