Nicholas Winton and the 669 Children

For nearly 50 years, the world did not know his name. He did not write memoirs, give interviews, or seek recognition. He simply did what he believed was right and moved on. This is the story of a man who proved that heroism does not always arrive with applause. His name was Nicholas Winton, a stockbroker in London who saved 669 children from Nazi-occupied Europe and returned home as if nothing extraordinary had happened at all.

Early Life Of Nicholas Winton

Nicholas Winton was born on 19 May 1909 in Hampstead, London, to German-Jewish parents who had immigrated to England in 1907. His father was Rudolph Wertheim, a bank manager, and his mother was Babette Wertheimer (who later used the name Barbara). They were a well-educated, financially stable family deeply committed to integration. To protect their children from the rising anti-Semitism in Europe, they made the deliberate choice to convert to Christianity and, in 1938, officially changed their surname from Wertheim to Winton.

Years later, Sir Nicholas’s daughter—also named Barbara Winton—became the keeper of his legacy. She authored his definitive biography, If It’s Not Impossible… The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton (recently republished as One Life), ensuring the world would never forget the 669 children he saved.

Winton grew up in a comfortable but unremarkable middle-class household. He did not experience poverty, war, or persecution during his childhood. He attended Stowe School, a prestigious but intellectually liberal institution that emphasized independent thinking rather than blind obedience.

After completing his schooling, Winton began training in international finance, working in Paris, London, and Hamburg. He returned to London and became a stockbroker, though he was also an ardent socialist who joined the Labour Party.

A Winter That Changed Everything

In December 1938, Europe stood on the edge of catastrophe. Nazi Germany had already annexed Austria and seized the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Jewish families were being stripped of rights, homes, and dignity. Violence was escalating. Fear was everywhere. Nicholas Winton was 29 years old, working as a stockbroker in London. He had planned a skiing holiday in Switzerland. At the last moment, a friend persuaded him to change plans and visit Prague instead, a decision that would alter hundreds of lives.

What Winton saw in Prague shattered him completely. Thousands of Jewish refugees were living in overcrowded camps, many of them children. Parents knew what was coming. They had seen Kristallnacht. They understood the direction history was taking. The adults had little hope of escape, but perhaps, they thought, their children could be saved. There was no official rescue program for them. So Winton decided to create one.

He faced a lot of hurdles while doing this great humanitarian work, as he was not a politician, had no government backing, no legal power, and a language barrier. He began by setting up a small office in his hotel room in Prague. Parents lined up, desperate, holding photographs of their children. Winton collected names, ages, and details, fully aware that he was often asking parents to make the most painful decision of their lives: to send their child away, not knowing if they would ever meet again. His goal was to get children out of Czechoslovakia and into British foster homes before the Nazis sealed the borders.

That was not enough to save the lives of children; it was not just about courage, but also about paperwork. He needed to bring a child into Britain, Winton had to coordinate trains and border crossings, find a foster family, secure a £50 guarantee per child (a large sum at the time), and arrange visas. And if he leaves them to british government, it would lead them to death.

Winton returned to London and worked day and night. He placed advertisements in newspapers, visited churches and synagogues, and knocked on doors asking families to take in unknown children from a foreign land. Many refused because of the fear of being caught, but many families agreed to accept those children.

The Kindertransport Trains

Between March and August 1939, eight trains left Prague carrying children to safety in Britain. The scenes at the station were heartbreaking. Parents kissed their children goodbye, smiling through tears, pretending everything would be fine. Most of them already knew the truth: this was likely the last time they would see their sons and daughters.

Many were right. When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the borders closed. Deportations began. Concentration camps followed. The parents who had placed their children on those trains were largely murdered in the Holocaust. But their children survived because there was one man who chose to be passive.

One train, scheduled for 1 September 1939, was supposed to carry 250 children. That same day, Germany invaded Poland. The train never left Prague. Those 250 children were never seen again. Nicholas Winton carried that knowledge quietly for the rest of his life.

After the war began, he joined royal airforce, and later worked with refugees, but never spoke about what he had done in Prague. He settled and got married, had children, and started living an ordinary life. No one has an idea what he had done in the past, not even his wife. He kept the documents, the list of names, photograph in a hidden place.

The Moment 669 Lives Came Back to Say Thank You

In 1988, nearly fifty years after the last train had left Prague, Nicholas Winton’s wife, Grete, made an ordinary discovery in their attic. An old scrapbook. Dusty. Forgotten. Inside it were lists of children’s names, transport documents, faded photographs, evidence of lives once balanced on the edge of extinction. Grete was stunned. Nicholas had never spoken of this. Not to friends. Not to colleagues. Barely even to her.

She showed it to a historian, and then it found its way to the BBC. Soon after, Nicholas Winton, now in his late seventies, was invited to appear on a television program called That’s Life!. He believed it was a routine interview. He sat in the audience, unaware that the past was about to rise up around him.

During the broadcast, the presenter turned to the audience and asked a simple question:
“Is there anyone here who owes their life to Nicholas Winton? If so, would you please stand?”

At first, nothing happened. Then one person stood. Then another. And another.

All around him, men and women in their forties and fifties slowly rose from their seats. Once frightened children clutching suitcases. Once names on a list. Once lives he had sent away into uncertainty so they might live at all. Nicholas Winton remained seated, frozen, as the realization settled over him. He was not surrounded by strangers. He was surrounded by lives. He covered his face and wept with the quiet weight of someone finally seeing the full measure of what he had done.

It became one of the most powerful moments in television history, not because it was staged, but because it was true.

The 669 children he helped save did not merely survive. They lived. They became doctors, politicians, mathematicians, filmmakers, journalists. Alf Dubs. Heini Halberstam. Karel Reisz. Joe Schlesinger. And countless others whose names never appeared on screen but mattered just as much. They built families of their own. Today, their children and grandchildren number in the thousands, a living legacy known as the Winton Generation.

Only then did the world begin to recognize Nicholas Winton.

He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He received the highest honors from the Czech Republic. His name entered history books, documentaries, and memorials.

Yet he never grew comfortable with the word hero.

“I wasn’t a hero,” he once said. “I just saw a problem that needed solving.”

That sentence tells us everything. He did not wait for permission. He did not wait for applause. He did not wait to see how the story would end.

At a moment when cruelty was loud and indifference was easy, Nicholas Winton chose to act quietly, stubbornly, and without expectation of recognition. He proved that history is not only shaped by generals and governments, but by ordinary people who decide that doing nothing is no longer an option.

And because one man refused to look away, thousands of people wake up every morning, breathe, love, and live, never knowing how close they once came to never being born at all.

Sometimes, the greatest heroes are the ones who never thought they were heroes at all.