BBC NEWS
October 28, 2014

A British man who saved 669 children, most of them Jews, from the Nazis has been awarded the Czech Republic’s highest state honour. Sir Nicholas Winton was 29 when he arranged trains to take the children out of occupied Czechoslovakia and for foster families to meet them in London. The 105-year-old was given the Order of the White Lion by the Czech president during a ceremony at Prague Castle.

In a speech, he thanked the British people who gave the children homes. He said: “I want to thank you all for this enormous expression of thanks for something which happened to me nearly 100 years ago – and a 100 years is a heck of a long time. I am delighted that so many of the children are still about and are here to thank me.”…..

……The remarkable mission of the man dubbed the “British Schindler” came to light only in the late 1980s. It began in 1938 after the Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland, the name for areas of pre-war Czechoslovakia. The then Mr Winton visited refugee camps outside Prague and decided to help children secure British permits in the same way children from other countries had been rescued by “kindertransports”. At the time he was a stockbroker in London, and being from a German Jewish family he said he was well aware of the urgency of the situation…….

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