It goes to show that you don't need riches, fame, or power to do great deeds. A little organizational skill and a willingness to apply it is all that is required.
“I just saw what was going on and did what I could to help.”
http://pryce-jones.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGJkOGUwMTZhMmRkMjgwMzdlZTlhYTA2MjJmYjVlNjA=Thursday, May 14, 2009
The English Schindler
On May 19, Sir Nicholas Winton will be celebrating his hundredth birthday. My colleague Jay Nordlinger, always quick to praise those who deserve it, reminded me of this man. He did something memorable in the last months of peace in 1939, when the Nazis were dismembering Czechoslovakia and it was clear that soon they’d begin persecutions. Winton was then aged 29, and a stock-broker’s clerk, not someone special but a person as ordinary as any other. He went to Prague, set up an office there, and organised eight trains that brought Jewish children to London. These children needed sponsors, papers, and funding, all of which Winton arranged. The ninth train was due to leave on September 3, the day war was declared, and therefore it was cancelled. The 250 children who would have been on that train were soon murdered.
Winton saved 667 children in all, though sometimes this figure is given as 669. There’s been some recognition. Books have been written about him, and films made, and he’s been called the English Schindler. The Queen knighted him, Vaclav Havel decorated him, and the Czechs proposed him for the Nobel Peace Prize. It so happens that a few years ago I caught him on a television programme, being interviewed by David Frost, he of the Nixon tapes. Frost brought in Alfred Dubs, one of the children saved, and who has made a success of his life in England, becoming a member of the House of Lords. Winton kept his composure even during this emotional encounter. His modesty is as exemplary as his conduct. He says of himself, “I just saw what was going on and did what I could to help.” The reward of the virtuous, according to the psalmist, is a long life, and that’s the case here. Happy Birthday!
