“Being the son of Sir Nicholas Winton is extraordinary. I fell somehow a fraud. People seem to think that I am special for no other reason than he was my father. I would prefer that they appreciated me for something I have done rather than just because I happen to have been born. But having been born as his son, I can use the opportunity to promote some of the values and ethics that he believed in, which is very worthwhile and gives me satisfaction. So, it's a double-edged sword very much."
"You have to wonder, what must it have been like? To put your child on a train to go to a country where you have probably never been to, to be brought be people who you certainly haven’t met and speaking a language which you probably don't understand. How emotional. And for the children, how peculiar it must be to be told ‘you are going on a short holiday, we see you again soon, maybe’, and have just a few possessions in one small case. And be sent on a four-day journey across Europe to London. And a number of the children have very emotional stories about arriving in London, and meeting their foster families for the first time, where the foster family would have to sign for the child. You know, treated like a business transaction. There was a child that had a label around their neck with a number, so they could be identified when they got there. The number of the child who would leave Prague, the number of the child on the list when arrived to London, the parent who signed for their child, so now they knew where their child did end up. And the child meeting their foster family for the first time. Many stories… Some of them had a very happy experience, some of them not very happy experience.”
“…when the papers ended up with the researchers and through a series of coincidences ended up as a BBC television program, which I am sure most people have seen. When he was, I say, reunited, I am not sure reunited is the word, because I am not sure he was ever united with them… When he was introduced to a number of the kinder that he had saved through the Kinderstransport from Prague in 1939. Under false pretences, he was brought to the TV studio under the pretext that he was giving some advice on checking the content of that show, while in fact, he was being on camera for the first time, an opportunity to meet some of the children. It was a hugely emotional piece of television and I mean still today, it is absolutely remarkable. It brings tears to my eye, when I... It is a remarkable piece of television, because it exposes for the first time what for him was a very small project, that lasted nine months of things he did of the work, and saved, for him, just a few people. But for the few people he saved, it was their whole life. And it is only when you are confronted with what one life means, that it has such an impact. And for me that was… When I understood what the meaning of the Kindertransporten rescuing people looks like... When those people stood up and you think, you know, they would not have been there if he had not bothered to make the effort… As you can see, it had quite an impact on me.”
Nicholas Winton Jr. was born near Maidenhead, England, United Kingdom, on 27th July 1952. His father, Sir Nicholas Winton, is publicly known for the organization of Kindertransporten, also popularly known as “Winton trains”, which saved the lives of 669 mainly Jewish children before the outbreak of the WW2. His mother, Grete Gjelstrup, was born in Vejle, Denmark, met her life partner in France, in International Refugee Organization, where they both worked, and married in 1948 in Grete’s Danish hometown. Nick, as he is known, studied in boarding school, where he learned to fly under the Royal Air Force, however, finally didn’t become a pilot, and instead opened his own marketing agency. In the 1980s, after a series of unexpected events, a big black trunk from Winton’s attic was held to a researcher, and finally led to the BBC program That’s Life, presented in 1988. There, Sir Nicholas Winton, was presented to a total of 120 children who replied to BBC’s search of more personal witnesses of Kindertransporten, and his story was uncovered after five decades. In 2003, Sir Nicholas Winton was knighted by the Queen Elizabeth, and died in 2015 at the age of 106. His son Nick continues in his legacy giving conferences on his father’s story.
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