Britain`s Schindler who saved 669 children from Nazis dies at 106

Britain`s Schindler who saved 669 children from Nazis dies at 106. July. 03, 2015 07:25. zsh75@donga.com.

Nicholas Winton, often called Britain`s Schindler for his rescue of 669 Jewish children destined for Nazi concentration camps in the former Czechoslovakia, died on Wednesday at 106. His family said that he died peacefully as his daughter and grandchildren watched him.

Born into a Jewish family in Britain, he was a stockbroker in 1939, when he visited a Jewish refugee camp in Czechoslovakia at the request by one of his friends. Sensing an imminent war, he sends Jewish children to his country. He spent nearly all of his assets to run advertisements on British newspaper to look for British families to host the children. He also persuaded the British customs authorities to accept children who were not sufficiently documented.

From March to August 1939, he evacuated a total of 669 children to Britain in eight train batches. On September 1 in the same year, the ninth train with 250 children aboard could not leave Prague, as World War II broke out. The whereabouts of the children aboard the train have not been confirmed. It is presumed that they were taken to Nazi concentration camps and died there. After the war began, Winton served in the British air force.

Because of a sense of guilty for failure to rescue the children, Winton never told anyone about his good deeds after the war was over. Winton`s story made public in 1988, when his wife Grete found his diaries, the list of the children and letters from them. He had not even told his wife about the story until then.

Later, he said in a media interview that he was just "at the right place at the right time," refusing to be compared with Oskar Schindler, the German who saves 1,100 Jewish people from Nazi concentration camps. He insisted that unlike Schindler, his life had never been in danger. He was recommended for a Nobel Peace Prize three times and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003. In 1998, his first reunion with the children in 60 years made healines.

BBC reported that July 1 was also the day when he evacuated 241 children to London. British Prime Minister David Cameron paid tribute to Winton, tweeting: "We must never forget Sir Nicholas Winton`s humanity in saving so many children from the Holocaust."