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re: The Jewish Schindler: Woman Posed as Countess to Fool NAZIS & Save 10,000 Lives
Saving The Children From The Holocaust
'Holocaust, Hebrew Shoʾah, Yiddish and Hebrew Ḥurban (“Destruction”), the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by NAZI Germany and its collaborators during World War II'
BBC 16 MAY 2023
Nicholas Wintons' Children: The Czech Jews rescued by 'British Schindler'
Sir Nicholas Winton was a 29-year-old stockbroker who in 1939 organized trains out of Prague to secure the safe passage of 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia to England at the dawn of World War II.
Winton set up an office in a hotel in Prague...
Dubbed the "British Schindler", Sir Nicholas Winton rescued 669 children destined for Nazi concentration camps from Czechoslovakia as the outbreak of World War Two loomed.
Winton and a refugee child in 1939
His death at the age of 106 came on the same day 76 years ago when the train carrying the largest number of children - 241 - departed from Prague.
The reluctant hero worked to find British families willing to put up £50 to look after the boys and girls in their homes.
His efforts were not publicly known for almost 50 years.
More than 370 of the children he saved have never been traced and do not know the full story.
'English Schindler' Winton was reunited with rescued children on That's Life in 1988
"One day my father called my brother and me and he said, 'sit down boys, you're going on a long journey'," said John Fieldsend, now 84.
Born in Germany, Mr Fieldsend's original name was Hans Heinrich Fiege.
His family fled to the Czech Republic when the Nazi persecution of the Jews began, prior to the outbreak of World War Two.
"As the train was leaving my mother took her wristwatch off, passed it through the window and simply said, 'remember us'."
Lia Lesser, 84, now lives in Birmingham but was originally taken in by a woman who lived on the Isle of Anglesey.
"We didn't know we wouldn't see our parents again," she said.
"I think they must have known there was a good chance they wouldn't see us again, and they were very brave to let us go."
"I never knew how my mother arranged it, she never talked about it," said Zuzana Maresova, who was born in Prague and later returned there.
She said her mother gave her a book about flowers and said, "you're going to a place where these flowers grow".
"That's all I knew," she said.
The humanitarian goals of Winton, who was born in the Hampstead district of north London in May 1909, were helped by a 1938 Act of Parliament that permitted the entry to the UK of refugee children under the age of 17, as long as money was deposited to pay for their eventual return home.
He set up an office in a hotel in Prague where he was quickly besieged by families desperate to get their children out before Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.
"There was a long queue and at the end of the queue was a small office, and we got some forms to fill in," said Ruth Halova, who was born in Prague.
"Within three months we got the names of foster parents who were prepared to take us in, and mine were a Mr and Mrs Jones from Birmingham."
The 90-year-old added: "There was a steam engine, the old wagons were made of wooden planks.
"Everybody got this label on cardboard with a piece of string with a number [on it], and then we were shoved into the carriages."
Milena Grenfell-Baines (left) and Ruth Halova are two of the people Winton rescued during his mission, which is commemorated by a statue at Prague railway station
Winton, who lived in Pinkneys Green in Maidenhead, until his death, worked with relief organisations to set up the Czech Kindertransport, just one of a number of initiatives attempting to rescue Jewish children from Germany and the Nazi-occupied territories.
He organised a total of eight trains from Prague, with some other forms of transport also set up from Vienna.
Ms Maresova said: "We were rather excited because we thought it was some kind of adventure."
However, she added the image of all the parents' "pressed faces to the windows and tears running down their faces, and wondering why they're crying", had remained with her all her life.
Mrs Lesser said: "The only thing I had was a pendant with a picture of Moses on one side, and on the other were the Ten Commandments, and that's the only piece of jewellery that I brought with me.
"Apart from that I had a Czech storybook... I had no dolls, teddy bears or anything like that. I just had two suitcases with clothes in."
Sir Nicholas Winton (bottom right, sitting down) in 1988 on That's Life when some of the people he rescued were in the audience and surprised him
"The next thing I remember was being handed over to a gentleman who couldn't speak Czech," said Ms Maresova of her arrival in England.
"He had a paper with all sorts of questions in English and Czech.
"Whenever he wanted to ask me something he pointed: 'Are you hungry? Do you want to eat something? Do you want to drink something? Do you want to use the toilet?'"
Mrs Lesser said: "In the early days I corresponded with my parents and then we corresponded through the Red Cross, and then eventually the letters stopped.
"I think that's when they were in Auschwitz."
When the war ended she said realised they had "perished".
Winton was knighted by the Queen in March 2003
Mr Fieldsend received a letter just after the war, in 1946, and said his first thought was: "Hooray, they're alive."
"My mother wrote: 'When you receive this letter the war will be over... we want to say farewell to you - to our dearest possession in the world, and only for a short time were we able to keep you'," he said.
The letter went on to list other members of his family who had been "taken".
In the letter, his father wrote: We are going into the unknown with the hope that we shall yet see you again when God wills."
Mr Fieldsend described the letter as "fantastic", adding: "What wonderful parents I had."
Ms Halova was lucky to be reunited with her mother after the war and described it as "the answering of my biggest prayer".
Some 9,000 victims of the Nazis are buried in the Jewish cemetery at Terezin Memorial, formerly the Theresienstadt concentration camp, in the Czech Republic
In 2014, 60 Minutes met Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker who in 1939 travelled to Czechoslovakia and saved 669 children from the Holocaust, by DECEPTION and FRAUD.
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