Barbara Winton's remarkable story of her father, the man who saved nearly 700 children from the concentration camps
Nicholas Winton with one of the children he rescued during the second world war. Photograph: Pa/PA Archive
In 1939, Nicholas Winton, now 105, saved 669 children from the Nazis. Most of the children were Czech refugees from Jewish families, the other members of which ended up in concentration camps.
Nearly 6,000 people in the world today are alive because Winton responded to a phone call from Prague in December 1938. The call was from his friend Martin Blake, who was engaged in helping Jewish refugees and was asking for Winton's assistance. On arrival in Prague, Winton immediately took action, setting up an office in his hotel in Wenceslas Square. He persuaded the German authorities to let a number of Jewish children leave, and identified British foster families who would open their homes to them. (In November 1938, shortly after Kristallnacht, parliament approved a measure that would allow the entry into Britain of refugees younger than 17, if they had a place to stay and provided that £50 was deposited to pay for their eventual return to their own country.) He then organised eight evacuations on the Czech Kindertransport train from Prague to London's Liverpool Street station. He spent only three weeks in Prague – the maximum length of time he could get off from his job as a stockbroker in the City – though he worked in the evenings during the following eight months to complete the mission.
For half a century, Winton knew nothing of the nearly 700 people who now call themselves "Nicky's children". He did not seek them out after the war and rarely spoke of the episode. But the details were waiting to be found – in a scrapbook crammed with documents, photographs and a list of every child he saved. It was not until the BBC got hold of the scrapbook in 1988 that the story came to light. Invited by Esther Rantzen to sit in the audience of her show That's Life!, Winton was overwhelmed when she announced live on air that the people in the audience around him were the children he had saved.
If it's Not Impossible is more than the tale of this extraordinary mission: written by Barbara Winton, Nicholas's daughter, it fills in the details of his life during this era. A one-time pacifist, he eventually became a recruit and served in the Red Cross at Dunkirk, before touring Europe with the RAF and, after the war, working for the UN International Refugee Organisation. Researching the book, Barbara Winton spent much time with his documents and diaries, and found not only further details of the now celebrated rescue, but more surprising fragments of family history, including the fact that Winton's aunt had been a German spy during the first world war.
The moment Winton, on returning from the Dunkirk evacuation, realised he could not continue in his City office work was when a colleague said, with a breathtaking lack of perspective: "Oh Nicky, things aren't too good – gilt‑edge bonds are flat today." But though compelled to get more directly involved in the conflict, he retained a striking composure, even in the most difficult circumstances. Postwar diary entries describe his role processing the possessions of those killed in the extermination camps: he recalls the system of sorting, melting and transporting vast quantities of jewels, cigarette cases and false teeth.
Like her father, Barbara Winton is not sentimental; she lets the story tell itself. Nicholas Winton is not widely known in the UK, but in the Czech Republic he is considered a national hero. Last year, Czech campaigners won him a nomination for the Nobel peace prize, and recently the president announced that he will be awarded their highest public honour, the Order of the White Lion. The comparisons to Oskar Schindler, who is credited with saving 1,200 Jews employed in his munitions factory, are inevitable. But Winton's achievements stand on their own merit, and this book is not afraid to detail his quirks and flaws – 24 hours lost to absinthe in La Rochelle, for instance, and the smuggling of his favourite etched Czech wine glasses out of Prague under the noses of the authorities.
Both father and daughter resist hero worship. The book's title is a nod to his often-repeated motto: "If it's not impossible, there must be a way to do it." Speaking at his 105th birthday party last month, Winton expressed his belief that goodness properly understood is not passive, but active – that the world requires individuals who not only refrain from harming others, but energetically seek out those in need of help. The remarkable story of his own actions and their consequences provides an object lesson in how to go about it.
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