Winton Porter Popular Books

Winton Porter Biography & Facts

Sir Nicholas George Winton (né Wertheim; 19 May 1909 – 1 July 2015) was a British stockbroker and humanitarian who helped to rescue Jewish children who were at risk of being murdered by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Born to German-Jewish parents who had immigrated to Britain at the beginning of the 20th century, Winton assisted in the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II. On a brief visit to Czechoslovakia, he helped compile a list of children needing rescue and, returning to Britain, he worked to fulfill the legal requirements of bringing the children to Britain and finding homes and sponsors for them. This operation was later known as the Czech Kindertransport (German for 'children's transport'). His humanitarian accomplishments remained unknown and unnoticed by the world for nearly 50 years until 1988 when he was invited to the BBC television programme That's Life!, where he was reunited with dozens of the children he had helped come to Britain and was introduced to many of their children and grandchildren. The British press celebrated him and dubbed him the "British Schindler". In 2003, Winton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for "services to humanity, in saving Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia". In 2014, he was awarded the highest honour of the Czech Republic, the Order of the White Lion (1st class), by Czech President Miloš Zeman. Winton died in 2015, aged 106. Early life Winton was born on 19 May 1909 in Hampstead, London, to Jewish parents Rudolph Wertheim (1881–1937), a bank manager, and Barbara (née Wertheimer, 1888–1978), as the middle of three children. His elder sister was Charlotte (1908–2001) and his younger brother was Robert (1914–2009). His parents were German Jews who had moved to London two years earlier. The family name was Wertheim, but they changed it to Winton in an effort at integration. They also converted to Christianity, and Winton was baptised. In 1923, Winton entered Stowe School, which had just opened. He left without qualifications, attending night school while volunteering at the Midland Bank. He then went to Hamburg, where he worked at Behrens Bank, followed by Wasserman Bank in Berlin. In 1931, he moved to France and worked for the Banque Nationale de Crédit in Paris. He also earned a banking qualification in France. Returning to London, he became a broker at the London Stock Exchange. Though a stockbroker, Winton was also "an ardent socialist who became close to Labour Party luminaries Aneurin Bevan, Jennie Lee and Tom Driberg". Through another socialist friend, Martin Blake, Winton became part of a left-wing circle opposed to appeasement and concerned about the dangers posed by the Nazis. At school, he had become an outstanding fencer, fencing both foil and épée, and was selected for the British team in 1938. He had hoped to compete in the following Olympics, but the games were cancelled because of World War II. Rescue work Shortly before Christmas 1938, Winton was planning to travel to Switzerland for a skiing holiday. Following a call for help from Marie Schmolka and Doreen Warriner, he decided instead to visit Prague and help Martin Blake, who was in Prague as an associate of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, then in the process of being occupied by Germany, and had called Winton to ask him to assist in Jewish welfare work. Alongside the Czechoslovak Refugee Committee, the British and Canadian volunteers such as Winton, Trevor Chadwick, and Beatrice Wellington worked in organising to aid children from Jewish families at risk from the Nazis. Many of them set up their office at a dining room table in a hotel in Wenceslas Square. Altogether, Winton spent one month in Prague and left in January 1939, six weeks before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Other foreign volunteers remained, such as Chadwick, Warriner and Wellington. In November 1938, following Kristallnacht in Nazi-ruled Germany, the House of Commons approved a measure to allow the entry into Britain of refugees younger than 17, provided they had a place to stay and a warranty of £50 (equivalent to £4,033 in 2023) was deposited per person for their eventual return to their own country. Netherlands An important obstacle was getting official permission to cross into the Netherlands, as the children were to embark on the ferry at Hook of Holland. Following Kristallnacht in November 1938, the Dutch government officially closed its borders to any Jewish refugees. The Royal Netherlands Marechaussee searched for them and returned any found to Germany, despite the horrors of Kristallnacht being well known. Winton succeeded, thanks to the guarantees he had obtained from Britain. Following the first train, the process of crossing the Netherlands went smoothly. Winton ultimately found homes in Britain for 669 children, many of whose parents perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp. His mother worked with him to place the children in homes and later hostels. Throughout the summer of 1939, he placed photographs of the children in Picture Post seeking families to accept them. By coincidence, the names of the London and North Eastern Railway steamers which operated the Harwich to Hook of Holland route included the Prague and the Vienna; the former can be seen in a 1938 Pathé Newsreel. He also wrote to U.S. politicians such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt, asking them to take more children. He said that two thousand more might have been saved if they had helped, but only Sweden took any besides those sent to Britain. The last group of children, scheduled to leave Prague on 1 September 1939, was unable to depart. With Hitler's invasion of Poland on the same day, the Second World War had begun. Of the 250 children due to leave on that train, only two survived the war. Winton acknowledged the vital roles in Prague of Doreen Warriner, Trevor Chadwick, Nicholas Stopford, Beatrice Wellington, Josephine Pike and Bill Barazetti (1914–2000), who also worked to evacuate children from Europe. Winton stayed in Prague only about three weeks and left before the Nazis occupied the country. He never set foot in the Prague main railway station, although a statue of him is erected there. He later wrote that Chadwick "then went to work and dealt with all the considerable problems at the Prague end and this work he continued to carry on even when it became difficult and dangerous when the Germans arrived. He deserves all praise". Notable people saved Alf Dubs, Baron Dubs (born 1932), British Labour Party politician and former Member of Parliament Heini Halberstam (1926–2014), mathematician Renata Laxova (1931–2020), paediatric geneticist Isi Metzstein (1928–2012), modernist architect Gerda Mayer (1927–2021), poet Karel Reisz (1926–2002), filmmaker Joe Schlesinger (1928–2019), Canadian television journalist and author Yitzchok Tuvia Weiss (1926–2022), Chief Rabbi of the Edah HaChar.... Discover the Winton Porter popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Winton Porter books.