A Person Who Has Made A Difference – Sir Nicholas Winton

by Gil Pirotsky, Yoav Pekel and Nevo Mashiach

Joined Nov 2019
Published Books 1

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION by Nevo

Throughout history, there have been people who have influenced the way we live. Sir Nicholas Winton is one of these people.

I chose to prepare this research project on Sir Nicholas Winton for several reasons. To begin with, during the summer vacation my family and I watched a play about Nicholas which made me interested in Sir Nicholas’s story. Moreover, my teacher told us that the project needs to be about a Jewish person who left a mark on the world or someone who contributed to the Jewish people like Nicholas did.

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There are a number of things that I already know about Nicholas Winton. Firstly, I know that he rescued children from Nazi Germany. In addition, I know that Nicholas born, lived and died in the United Kingdom.

I expect to learn new and interesting things about Nicholas Winton. First and foremost, I expect to find out why he risked himself to help children that he didn’t know and so far from him. Also, I want to learn how and when he started to help these children. Finally, I would like to discover what he has done since the war ended

Nicholas Winton has left his mark on the world. I am looking forward to finding out more about him.

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INTRODUCTION by Yoav

Throughout history, there have been people who have influenced the way we live. Sir Nicholas Winton is one of these people.

I chose to prepare this research project on Sir Nicholas Winton for several reasons. To begin with, I was given the task of finding a person who has made a difference, and I came up with this man, Sir Nicholas Winton. Furthermore , I had to choose three people who have made a difference to society and Sir Winton, in my opinion, was the most interesting one.

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There are a number of things that I already know about Nicholas Winton. Firstly, I know that he rescued about 600 children during the Holocaust. In addition, I know that he served for 14 years in the Royal Air Force of the United Kingdom.

I expect to learn new and interesting things about Nicholas Winton. First and foremost, I expect to find out why he decided to rescue so many children during the Holocaust. Also, I want to learn what his motivation to join the military was. Finally, I would like to discover, how he managed to rescue all these kids, whom he didn’t know.

Nicholas Winton has left his mark on the world. I am looking forward to finding out more about him

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INTRODUCTION by Gil

Throughout history, there have been people who influenced the way we live. Sir Nicholas Winton is one of these people.

I chose to prepare this research project on Sir Nicholas Winton for several reasons. To begin with, I saw a short movie about him, and it interested me to learn who this person was. Moreover, our teacher instructed us to do a project on a man who contributed to the Jewish community, and the man we chose did.

There are a number of things that I already know about Nicholas Winton. Firstly, I know he rescued kids during the holocaust. Furthermore, I know he died a few years ago since I heard about it in the news.

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I expect to learn new and interesting things about Nicholas Winton. First and foremost, I would like to know how he was able to rescue 669 children during the holocaust. Also, I want to learn why he chose to rescue those kids instead of running away. Finally, I would like to understand why he wasn’t better known for his deeds.

Nicholas Winton has left his mark on the world. I am looking forward to finding out more about him.

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Biography

Early life

Sir Nicholas George Winton was born on 19 May 1909 in London to Jewish parents. His family name was originally Wertheim but the family changed it and converted to Christianity in order to integrate in to the society. In 1923 he entered Stowe school which had just opened. He left without qualifications but he was an extraordinary fencer and his plan was to join the British team and participate in the 1940 Olympic Games but the games were cancelled because of the war. After school he volunteered at a bank, then he moved to Hamburg where he worked at two banks and to France in 1931 where he worked at the local bank receiving a banking qualification there. Nicholas eventually returned to London and worked as a broker at the “London Stock Exchange”. During his time as a broker he established several connections with Labour Party members.

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Before the War
In 1938, Nicholas was planning to travel to Switzerland for a skiing holiday. He decided instead to visit Prague and help Martin Blake (whom he had met during his work in London), who was in Prague as an associate of the British Committee
for Refugees from Czechoslovakia. The horrors Winton witnessed about the Jews situation and the education he received inspired him to leave his job and establish an organization to aid children from Jewish families at risk from the Nazis. He wrote letters to leaders from all over the world asking for their help. After the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) on 10 November 1938 the British government decided to allow the entry into Britain of refugees younger than 17,
provided they had a place to stay and a warranty of £50 was deposited for their eventual return to their own country.

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A Person Who Has Made A Difference – Sir Nicholas Winton by Gil Pirotsky, Yoav Pekel and Nevo Mashiach - Ourboox.com

In other words the kids had to leave their parents and be adopted by a British family. It’s important to mention that

Nicholas paid from his own money for all those kids, which was about 33,450 Euro sterling, which is now 2,232,831 Pound sterling. In March 14 1939, the first transport of children organized by Winton left Prague by plane for London, the day before the Germans occupied the Czech lands
First, children got on the train at the Prague station, while their parents said goodbye for the last time. After that, they traveled through the heat of the Nazi territory. The civilians were nice and often gave sweets to the kids in the smaller stations. From there, they traveled to the Netherlands and got on a ship to the UK In August 2, 1939 the last trainload of children left Prague. The ninth train scheduled to leave Prague on 1 September 1939, was unable to depart. War World Two had begun. Nicholas saved 669 kids during this time.

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During the War
At the beginning of the war, Nicholas served in the Red cross. After the hard sights he had seen, he decided to enlist in the Royal Air Force. He was promoted several times from aircraftman to flight lieutenant.

After The War
Nicholas continued his fight for refugees as part of the International Refugee Organization and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Paris where he met his future wife Grete Gjelstrup, a Danish secretary. They had 3
kids. Their 3rd kid, Robin, died from meningitis before his sixth birthday and it affected Nicholas so much that he founded a local support organization.

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He hadn’t contacted any of the kids he had rescued and hadn’t told anyone about the massive rescue for 50 years until his wife found his scrapbook in his attic, containing a list of the children and the addresses of the families who took them.
His wife took it to a Holocaust researcher and Letters were sent to every known address and 80 of “Winton’s Children” were found in Britain. Winton himself couldn’t remember the reason why it was done. During an episode of a BBC program, Winton was invited as a member of the audience, his scrapbook was shown and his achievements were explained. But when the host show asked whether anybody owes their life to Nicholas Winton and if so, to stand – more than twenty people stood up and applauded him. Sir Nicholas Winton got a lot of honors such as the Order of the White Lion,

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which is the Czech Republic’s highest honor for giving Czech children “the greatest possible gift: the chance to live and to be free”, the Pride of Britain award and a lot more.

Death

Winton died on the morning of 1 July 2015 at the age of 106. Winton’s death came exactly 76 years after the day the train with the children he saved left Prague. He was commemorated in many ways like the “Winton train” which is a train that was made in 2009 and traveled the original way from London to Prague. Moreover, in the main railway station in Prague there is a statute of Winton holding in his hands some of the children he saved. Furthermore, one of the children he saved was “Hugo Merom” (one of the Israeli Air Force founders) who founded the Airborne Combat Rescue And Evacuation Unit 669 in memory of the 669 children Wilton had saved.

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Nicholas Winton’s Influence On Us

Nicholas’s famous quotation,”There are some stories which we are not only an audience to, but may become their participants.“

~ Sir Nicholas Winton.

Sir Nicholas Winton had an influence on us in a number of ways. To begin with, Winton’s deeds made us realize that we can make an influence on people the same Nicholas had done on the children. Moreover, Nicholas inspired us to be better people and be more aware of the environment. Lastly, he influenced us to be humble even when we do a good deed. He didn’t brag about his actions and didn’t tell anyone about his deeds. We adopted his approach and started reaching out to people who need help.

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In conclusion, we are grateful that we have decided to do our project on him since he was such an inspirational and wonderful human being.

The Interview

We chose to interview Barbara Winton. She is Nicholas’s daughter and is a social activist.

There are several reasons why we chose to interview her. First of all, she is Nicholas’s daughter so she knows him better than everybody else. Moreover, she created a website about Nicholas Winton and wrote books about him, therefore she has a lot of knowledge about him.

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Q: What was there about his character that explains his heroic deeds?

A: He didn’t like to be told what to do by those in authority if he had decided differently. He was very stubborn. He had a strong sympathy for the ‘underdog’ – those who were in need – his Jewish background helped him understand this and the effect of anti-semitism in Europe on his wider family. He liked to make things happen and be in charge of a project once he had decided that something was wrong and needed changing.

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Q: Do many teenagers like us turn to you for information about your father?

A: Yes, I get a lot of requests for information, partly because I am his daughter and knew him so well and partly because I wrote his biography and learnt so much about him and his life.

Q: How do you think your father should be remembered?

A: My father felt that talking about history didn’t change anything in the present. He was a man of action and wanted people to get involved in helping their communities or causes they felt strongly about. So I feel the best way to remember him is to act like him and to become active in helping those in need. He would be most pleased if he knew that people had been inspired by his actions to take action themselves.

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Q: Is there anything else that you want to tell us?

A: I wish you well in your project and I hope that it has the effect of galvanising others to become active helpers of others, whether locally or for causes further afield.

A Report Of The Presentation

On 22/12/19, we made a presentation in front of our classmates and our teacher on Sir Nicholas Winton.

There were a number of things we wanted to achieve by making our presentation in this way. To begin with, we wanted to enlighten our classmates about Sir Nicholas Winton. In addition, we hoped that the presentation would be interesting and understood by our classmates.

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In order to prepare this presentation, we followed a number of steps. Firstly, we looked for interesting parts from the Biography section and added them to the presentation. We also found interesting photos and videos from his life. Secondly, we searched for interesting activities we could do as the second part in our presentation. Last but not least, we made a PowerPoint presentation.

The presentation in class was done in the following way. We started by telling about his childhood, continued to talk about his deeds before the war, his service in the war, his work with autistic children and finally about the honors he received. At the end of the presentation we did a fun quiz with awards for the winners.

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Immediately after the presentation, we received feedback from our teacher and peers. They said we talked in a high level of English, everything was understood, the presentation was emotional, the design of the presentation was attractive and finally, the teacher told us that we had put much effort and hard work into preparing our presentation.

We learnt several things about Sir Nicholas Winton while doing this section. First of all, we hadn’t known or understood the meanings of the honors he had received until we did the research for this section. Secondly, we didn’t anticipate the emotional weight that the video clip of his appearance at the BBC Show would have until we saw our classmate’s reactions to it .

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Looking back on our presentation, there are several things that could have been done differently. To begin with, the pace of the presentation was too quick for us. Moreover, the quiz we did at the end could have been more organized than it was if our instructions had been cleaner.

In conclusion, we enjoyed doing the presentation in front of our classmates and the teacher. We exposed them to Sir Nicholas Winton’s fascinating life. We hope that our presentation inspired them to be better people just as Sir Nicholas Winton inspired us.

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