The story of Nicholas Winton (1909-2015) is about as heartwarming as it gets, but also has, as I’ll claim, a double overtone of sadness. Born in London in 1909 to Jewish parents who had immigrated from Germany, Winton was a broker and stockbroker, but in 1938 moved to Prague to work with the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia. (The country was at that time already occupied by the Nazis). And he became a man on a mission: to save Jewish children from falling into the hands of the Nazis. It was tough, and he had to get the kids through the Netherlands, where they could board a ship to England.
In the end Winton saved 669 children, nearly all of them Jewish, though, sadly, their parents remained in Europe because only children younger than 17 could be rescued. Nearly all their parents later died in the camps or ghettos. Here’s the account from Wikipedia.
Alongside the Czechoslovak Refugee Committee, the British and Canadian volunteers such as Winton, Trevor Chadwick, and Beatrice Wellington worked in organising to aid children from Jewish families at risk from the Nazis.Many of them set up their office at a dining room table in a hotel in Wenceslas Square. Altogether, Winton spent one month in Prague and left in January 1939, six weeks before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Other foreign volunteers remained, such as Chadwick, Warriner and Wellington. In November 1938, following Kristallnacht in Nazi-ruled Germany, the House of Commons approved a measure to allow the entry into Britain of refugees younger than 17, provided they had a place to stay and a warranty of £50 (equivalent to £3,397 in 2021) was deposited per person for their eventual return to their own country.
Netherlands
An important obstacle was getting official permission to cross into the Netherlands, as the children were to embark on the ferry at Hook of Holland. Following Kristallnacht in November 1938, the Dutch government officially closed its borders to any Jewish refugees. The Royal Netherlands Marechaussee searched for them and returned any found to Germany, despite the horrors of Kristallnacht being well known
Winton succeeded, thanks to the guarantees he had obtained from Britain. Following the first train, the process of crossing the Netherlands went smoothly. Winton ultimately found homes in Britain for 669 children, many of whose parents perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp. His mother worked with him to place the children in homes and later hostels.Throughout the summer of 1939, he placed photographs of the children in Picture Post seeking families to accept them. By coincidence, the names of the London and North Eastern Railway steamers which operated the Harwich to Hook of Holland route included the Prague and the Vienna; the former can be seen in a 1938 Pathé Newsreel.
Back in Britain, Winton lived to the ripe old age of 106, and the children he saved had become middle-aged. Many of them, unknown to him, were in the audience during a 1988 episode of the BBC show “That’s Life”. At that time Winton was 79. He knew the show was celebrating his life, but had no idea that the audience consisted not only of the children he saved (now grown up) but of their own children and grandchildren. When they stood up to identify themselves, seen in the clip below, the magnitude of what he’d done became clear, and he wept. I always do, too, when I see this video. I challenge you not to mist up when you watch this!:
Winton was modest and didn’t flaunt his achievements. In fact, they were unknown to his wife, who discovered them only when she found a scrapbook in their attic with the names of the children and of their parents. She gave the scrapbook to a Holocaust researcher, who tracked down many of the children, finding 80 of them in Britain. Many of them are in the video above. The rest is history.
Winton eventually accrued the honors he deserved, and got a knighthood in 2003 for “services to humanity, in saving Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia”.
As the old Jewish proverb goes, attributed to Hillel the Elder, “Whosoever destroys one soul, it is as though he had destroyed the entire world. And whosoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved the entire world.” I interpret this to mean that “the entire world” refers to the world apprehended by the person who lives or dies. (I often think of this when saving ducklings.) Well, Winton saved 669 entire worlds, and that’s something to marvel at.
Recently the BBC made a movie about Winton, using the title “One Life” taken from the proverb above. It stars Anthony Hopkins as Winton—an excellent choice—and has been critically acclaimed, garnering a 89% critics’ rating and a 96% public rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Well worth seeing, I’d think. (It also features Helena Bonham Carter and Lena Olin.)
But watch this 2-minute trailer, which includes a version of the scene above. But you may notice that one thing is missing: the trailer doesn’t use the words “Jew” or “Jewish.” They say “the children” and refer to them several times, but you’d have no idea from this trailer that they were Jewish children. The only sign of what’s happening is one scene in which there are a few Nazi flags.
Is this omission an accident? I tried to convince myself that it was, but after seeing the video and reading the articles below, I decided that it was no accident. They left “Jewish” out because they thought it might turn off the prospective audience. (Of course, once the audience has their butts in the theater, the movie can use the word more often.) But I’m not sure how often they use it. Can you imagine “Schindler’s List” having a trailer that doesn’t use the word “Jew”? It is, after all, about another man who saved Jews. (Winton is often called “The British Schindler”). And sure enough, it does: it mentions the word several times and shows lots of people wearing yellow stars, a Jewish wedding, and other tropes. What’s going on is very clear. Things sure have changed in the last thirty years (“Schindler’s List was released in 1993.)
Now, what about “One Life?” Here’s “Israeli filmmaker, director, and activist Yuval David [speaking] about the antisemitic environment in Hollywood and the purging of Jewish references in marketing of ‘One Life.’” David, who knows what he’s talking about, has absolutely no doubt that the omission was deliberate, engineered by the progressive ideology that pervades Hollywood (I’m starting to wonder if “Jew” or “Jewish” even appears in the film!). Have a look:
And below is an article from the popular entertainment magazine Variety that discusses how, in the movie’s promotion, they omitted mentioning the religion of the children who were saved, which of course is why they had to be saved. Click the headline to read. And here’s an excerpt from that piece about how they erased “Jewish” from the marketing materials, using instead the words “Central European.” That is shameful:
The marketing materials for Anthony Hopkins latest feature film, a Holocaust biopic titled “One Life,” are set to be amended after controversy ensued over the lack of reference to Jews.
“One Life” tells the story of Nicholas Winton (played by Hopkins), better known as the British Oscar Schindler. Winton helped save the lives of over 600 children – the majority of them Jewish – from the Nazis during World War II.
But there has been disquiet over marketing for the movie after it was claimed Jews had been erased from the synopsis.
The furore started after British media retailer HMV tweeted about the film and referred to the children saved by Winton as “Central European” rather than Jewish. A number of independent cinemas also used the term “Central European” instead of “Jewish” while describing the film on their websites. [JAC: This makes no sense: children who were “Central European” but not Jewish weren’t usually endangered.]
See-Saw Films, who produced “One Life,” and Warner Bros. Pictures., who are distributing it in the U.K., subsequently also came under fire for omitting the word “Jewish” from their marketing materials when describing the children saved by Winton, although they did not use “Central European.”
Warner Bros. in the U.K. declined to comment but Variety understands that following the criticism all Warner’s official marketing for the film will be amended to describe the children as “predominantly Jewish,” which reflects the fact that while most of the 600+ Czechoslovakian children were Jewish, a handful of them were non-Jewish political refugees.
Click:
At least they fixed the materials, but it’s clear that they left Judaism out of the materials on purpose. It’s the progressive Zeitgeist: Jews aren’t exactly the world’s most popular group.
The BBC itself, however, continues to omit any mention of Jews in its article below (click to read). There is not a single mention that the children were Jewish, which of course drives the whole movie. In case the BBC has a social-media promoted “change of heart,” you can find the original BBC article archived here.
Click to read:
I’ve put the entire text of this article below the fold, and you can do a search for “Jew” or “Jewish”. You won’t find it. That has to be a deliberate omission, for the reason the kids were saved simply must be part of the story.
Finally, there was a series of tweets about whether the BBC used the word “Jewish” in stores about the Holocaust. Their score: 50% (2 out of 4). Given the history of the BBC’s antisemitism, I call the omission deliberate, especially for the Winton movie. And, as you saw, I’m not alone,
Here are the tweets. Reader Jez says this about the first Tweeter:
Cath Leng, whose tweet alerted me to it, is a former BBC employee herself. She just posted a piece about how the BBC broadcast an unbalanced piece about the man who won a recent women’s pool competition – the woman he was going to face in the final politely declined to take part, forfeiting the prize. The BBC didn’t even interview her, and just focused on the man’s feelings.
This one does https://t.co/AZXqMjWnyN
— Cath Leng (@leng_cath) January 9, 2024
It’s in here
Surprised to see those words absent from any Holocaust story https://t.co/VmQUSNPGcm
— Cath Leng (@leng_cath) January 9, 2024
As Vonnegut said, so it goes.
h/t: Jez, Malgorzata
Click “continue reading” to see the BBC story:
Sir Nicholas Winton: Holocaust saviour ‘did not think he was a hero’
By Caroline Gall & Matt HutchinsonBBC News, West Midlands
The family of Sir Nicholas Winton, who organised the rescue of more than 600 children from the Nazis, say he refused to think of himself as a hero.
But his actions only really became widely known in 1988, when he was celebrated on the BBC’s That’s Life programme when the children, then adults, were in the show’s audience.
Sir Anthony Hopkins plays Sir Nicholas Winton in the film One Life
Mr Winton said his grandfather had become friends with many of the rescued children and had met them when they went to Maidenhead in Berkshire, where Sir Nicholas and his grandmother lived.
Laurence Winton said the family were pleased the film also showed the collaborative effort behind saving the children
“That’s what would have made Nicky happy to see the story told, if he thought it was going to inspire people to do something and take action today or to support refugees today – we are very pleased to see it on that basis.”
It looks to be a very good movie. I can’t even read the description of the embedded video without getting misty, so I’m even more of a softy than PCC(E). Even the Critical Drinker recommended the movie, with an uncharacteristic but audible lump in his throat when he gave his trademark sign-off “Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for today. Go away, now.”
As an aside, based on this and similar incidents: Can we try to start the trend of writing “progressives” instead of just progressives, i.e., always putting the word in scare quotes? I think the snark would be well-deserved.
“That’s all I’ve got for today — go away now.“
This is partly why the word “woke” is better than “progressive”; we shouldn’t go along with the idea that their ideology constitutes progress.
Richard Hanania offered an easy definition for woke, answering claims from the Left that the Right is always complaining about woke but can’t define it. He says it is a world view that sees everything as a struggle between oppressors and oppressed and uses totalitarian methods to enforce this by suppressing dissenting views.
Now that I can define “woke”, I am happy to return to using it, instead of progressive, scare quotes or no. (Btw, I always thought “progressive” really referred to progress along the road to communism, with a dash of welfare statism and reverse racism along the way as a smokescreen.)
I like Hanania’s succinct definition and will refer to it when I’m asked to define “woke.”
I conceive of “progressive” as the formal opposite of “conservative,” in that these two terms, in my strict view, refer to the rate of change in society, not towards any particular ideological end, though admittedly Marxists surely conceive of the term as moving towards their ultimate goal of communism.
While I’m at it, I conceive of “liberal” as the formal opposite of “authoritarian.” I believe that each one of us is an admixture of the progressive, conservative, liberal, and authoritarian. The ratios these traits varies from person to person, but I believe none of us is without at least a modicum of any of these four traits.
To go further, I conceive that the extremes of each of these traits are potentially destructive to society, viz., progressive becomes revolutionary, conservative becomes reactionary, liberal becomes anarchic, and authoritarian becomes totalitarian.
Here endeth the sermon. Hope I didn’t bend Da Roolz too much. Thanks for reading!
I recommend:
Yascha Mounk: The identity trap: a story of ideas and power in our time. Penguin, 2023
The Economist: Book review: How to cancel “cancel culture”. Oct 19, 2023
Two new books examine the brokenness of wokeness
https://archive.is/u4uxm
Ruy Teixeira: Time to Throw the Intersectional Left Under the Bus! Oct 19, 2023
This is a golden opportunity for the Democrats.
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/time-to-throw-the-intersectional
Oh, yes. Liberal refers to exactly how you define it almost everywhere in the, well, (formerly) liberal West. Its destructive extreme is indeed anarchy. I like your formulation of four dimensions and their polar extremes.
Another way to look at this is Jane Jacobs’s “Guardians and traders” in her 1992 book Systems of Survival . The sometimes counter-intuitive and not transparently obvious maxims she ascribes to each sect nicely illustrate how guardians and traders need each other despite their different world views.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_Survival
Um – I’m in haste, so I might have missed something, but I caught “liberal” – this is very important as of late – (everyone should) check PCC(E)’s post on a great book Kindly Inquisitors by Johnathan Rausch (sp.?), and then the book.
James Lindsay exposits on it on the idea of an epistemological basis for Classical Liberalism, esp. as being distinct from Leftism.
Cheers
Typo: Jonathan Rauch
Also : 1993, 2013 (yes, 1993!)
That was my thought, too, as I read the post. As Coel remarks above, though, this is why I continue (gleefully) to use the word “woke;” “progressives” are anything but progressive. One might almost be tempted to ask “progress toward what?”
I wonder, if they made a movie about the violence committed by Hamas against women, would they leave “Palestinian” out of their promo material?
Yes! There is nothing progressive or Left about the Puritanical Fake Left aka “The Woke”. They are nihilists who share the ultimate goal of the MAGA morons which is to tear down all Western societies and the Enlightenment Values which underpin them.
Wow Jerry thanks for writing about this today, and yes, I failed the challenge to not mist up watching the clip from the 1988 show. Good call using the Vonnegut quote to close. I’d love to know what Anthony Hopkins thinks about this.
Sir Anthony Hopkins is superb in the portrayal of Sir Nicholas Wintern possibly one of few actors who could capture the essence of the modest hero Wintern and the task he undertook to save all those children. I am curious as to whether he , Hopkins will make any comment as to the absence of all references to “Jewishness”
Hollywood and the BBC are a disgrace in their rabid antisemitism, cowards run these organisations, fearful of attracting attention from the violent assembly, namely Islam in all its forms. The BBC as a public broadcaster funded by public money is especially guilty and the current Director General and management have continued, especially since the October terrorist attack against Israel, the policy of Anti Israel in everything they report and they should all be removed from office.
I would also recommend a movie “The Windermere children” based on a true story in similar vein regarding “Holocaust” children taken to the English Lake District.
From PBS :- The Windermere Children is a new feature-length dramatization of a remarkable true story about hope in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
I challenge you not to mist up when you watch this!
Indeed. Winton was a great man, and the BBC should be ashamed of what it has done in expunging such an important part of his legacy.
The film does mention Jews, and states that ‘most of the children’ were Jews, but I don’t think it was emphasised often enough. Jewish refugee children forced to survive in the ghetto were the main trigger for his actions.
There is one scene where a rabbi says that Winton is Jewish as he has Jewish grandparents, which was when the rabbi then decided to trust him with the names of Jewish children who needed help. I thought that was odd.
I also wondered why they didn’t mention religion when pushing for people to take in children. I don’t remember it being mentioned that the refugee children were Jewish. I realise that saving children’s lives is more important than religion, but by not mentioning it, they almost left the impression that it was good old CofE Brits taking the children in, and I have no doubt it was also Jewish families.
Despite that, it’s a powerful film showing both the best and worst of humanity. Anthony Hopkins as the older Winton, shows great emotion in the aftermath and Helena Bonham Carter is excellent as the young Winton’s mother. I hope it gets an international release as Winton’s deeds didn’t come to light until the 80s.
In the light of current events we must ensure we remember the past.
We can count on the BBC for a certain delicacy of language in future references to the events of 1938-45 in Europe. It will presumably describe the holocaust as a campaign that made “Central Europeans” feel unsafe, prefiguring such contemporary ills as microaggression, Islamophobia, and transphobia.
Jerry wrote (bolding added):
“Winton was a broker and stockbroker, but in 1938 moved to Prague to work with the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia. (The country was at that time already occupied by the Nazis).”
Is it really true that Czechoslovakia was already occupied by Germany in 1938? I don’t think so. Just a small part of it was (not including Prague, the capital) – the border regions Sudentenland, where some ethnic Germans (the Sudeten) were living.
“The Sudetenland was assigned to Germany between 1 and 10 October 1938. The Czech part of Czechoslovakia was subsequently invaded by Germany in March 1939, with a portion being annexed and the remainder turned into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The Slovak part declared its independence from Czechoslovakia and became the Slovak Republic (Slovak State), a satellite state allied to Germany.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetenland
Also here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakia#History
Yes, you’re correct, but Winton worked there until the end of 1939, by which time I think most of Czechoslovakia was under German control. But do correct me if I’m wrong.
Doreen Warriner, who helped Winton, left in April 1939. According to the film Winton left before her, and she stayed until it became too dangerous. But films often play with reality.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doreen_Warriner
That is what the film shows. The refugees he saw in Prague had moved from the occupied area of Sudetenland to Prague to escape that area. You see the tanks rolling into Prague later, after he has successfully sent several trains to the UK. The tragedy is that he had another train ready to go as the Nazis marched into Prague. I don’t know If it was artistic license, but they show children literally on the train ready to go, and Nazis stopped it leaving. As Jerry said, most of those children left behind were murdered.
I have been reading the main BBC web page almost daily over the past few months and I have noticed—at least to my critical eye—an implicit anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias. I admit that I am myself conditioned to notice these things and perhaps even to notice them when they are not there, so I try to discount my impressions when I can.
But the BBC bias does seem to be as I state above. So, the fact that the article and marketing material leaves out the Jews is perhaps not surprising. It’s consistent with the BBC pattern. Unfortunately, leaving the Jewish children out of the mix destroys the entire rationale for the film and the story it has to tell. It speaks volumes that the BBC would rather destroy the premise of the film rather than admit that it’s about saving Jews.
Breaks my heart that the BBC has gone this way. This really is an example of organizational capture and the abandonment of any kind of impatiality.
The Beeb, or “Auntie” was once great. But no more, its blatant elitism, disdain for the electorate who voted for Brexit, and pro-Hamas stance are all good reasons to ignore it now. Even Dr Who contains lessons on respecting the pronouns of aliens – no kidding!
Not quite sure where you’re coming from in “disdain for the electorate who voted for Brexit”. Capture of the board and the news organization by the Tories had already taken place (Rona Fairhead as Chair just before she became a minister in Theresa May’s government, former Murdoch journalist James Harding as Head of News) and BBC News and Current Affairs was quite brazen in not allowing any criticism of Brexit (Nick Robinson, chief political correspondent, declared in April 2017 that “The referendum is over. The duty we broadcasters had to ‘broadly balance’ the views of the two sides is at an end.” — one of the most shameful utterances by a BBC journalist I’ve ever heard.) Nigel Farage had an almost permanent seat on the panel of Question Time. The BBC effectively became, for the four years it took Brexit to happen, the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation.
By the way, contrary to the assumption one of you made that it was probably mostly Jewish families who took in Kindertransport children in the UK, many did, but the majority of families were not Jewish. The appeal began as early as Conservative Prime Minister Baldwin in a famous radio broadcast as early as 1939. They were first placed in big cities like London or Manchester, but all children in the UK were planned for evacuation to safer rural areas once the bombing started. I wondered whether your assumption and even assumptions about the BBC leaving out the word Jew, while I agree with you all, might be partly a reflection of your US culture’s obsession with identity and religion, whereas Brits, very aware of the Nazi threat to liberty and to Jews, and more non-religious, might be more likely to view Winton’s brave actions as a humanitarian imperative regardless of the religion of the victim. I’m not saying you are all not right, but I speculated for a moment if there was more to it than latent racism.
Hi Daniel, I’m a Brit, and knowing something of the history I partly agree. The vast majority of kids saved by Kindertransport were Jewish, but (to my knowledge at least) many families that took them in (and paid a lot of money to do so – approx £2000 in today’s money) were not Jewish.
The picture is made yet fuzzier when taking into account evacuations because as you said, all children from the big cities (my grandparents and other family among them) were evacuated to the countryside. There were virtually no Jewish communities in rural areas, so children, even if they were Jewish, were unlikely to lodge with Jewish families. I come from mixed Jewish and non-Jewish stock so I am quite familiar with what went on.
In the UK there has never been the degree of community separation between Jews and non-Jews that is typically seen in the US. There are some very isolated and insular Jewish communities in the UK, but in general, that is the exception. Going back to before and during WW2 there was very little sense of ‘them and us’ and British families tended to regard Jewish kids as Christian kids with different-sounding names.
However, I disagree with a couple of points you made. Firstly, I think your point about ‘US culture’s obsession with identity and religion’ is misjudged, presumptive and quite rude. I’m pretty sure nearly all Americans, as well as nearly all Brits, view Winton’s actions as a selfless and wonderful humanitarian act of kindness. Seriously, from one Brit to another, using the word ‘obsession’ is a bit much mate.
Secondly, people are bloody right to complain about the elimination of the words ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’. It IS deliberate on the part of the BBC, this IS driven by the anti-Israel, pro-Palestine stance of the BBC and it IS disgusting, insupportable and unforgivable! What the hell is wrong with people at the BBC and the like? Why do they feel the need to eliminate the most pertinent details about these children and their families, just because they were Jewish?
Millions of Jews were slaughtered because they were Jews, this happened all too recently. It happened during the lifetimes of my family members who are still alive today. It WAS genocide, no ifs or buts, yet clueless, racist idiots at the BBC (and other outlets) are happy to ignore and paper over that fact because it suits their mistaken anti-colonial narrative, confirming their beliefs that whiteness and the West are the root of all evil.
Wonderful movie, and yes, a tear jerker in parts, even for someone as strong, brave and manly as me.
I am a typical and unemotional British guy who very rarely reacts to sentimentality. In truth, I’m a committed cynic. However, although I have seen this clip several times before, I was unable to remain dry-eyed. What a wonderful story, and what an incredible man. I wish I had been able to meet him.
What a guy.
According to at an anonymous source in Variety, nearly 15% of the 669 children were non-Jewish political refugees, and sensitivity to this fact led at least some people to avoid characterizing the children collectively as Jewish:
“The filmmakers were sensitive to the fact that one hundred of the children were not Jewish, they were political refugees, and made a decision that it was important to be inclusive,” said the source, who added that the events of Oct. 7 – which saw over 1,400 people killed by Hamas in Israel – did not have any bearing on the film’s marketing materials.”
https://variety.com/2024/film/global/one-life-anthony-hopkins-marketing-materials-jewish-backlash-1235861287/
Oddly enough, this is the only source I can find that actually tries to quantify how many of the children were actually Jews. Just about every article on this story portrays the children as “mostly Jewish” or “almost all Jews.” Even this Variety article says that “most of the 600+ Czechoslovakian children were Jewish, a handful of them were non-Jewish political refugees.”
Mileage may differ, but I’m not sure that 100 children out of 600+ is negligible or a “handful.” Without denying the obvious woke hostility to Jews and Israel that is on the rise today, I must admit that this dismisive characterization of the non-jewish children makes me a little uncomfortable. While it is certainly true that most of the children were Jews, a significant number were apparently not.
I don’t doubt that a lot of people would gladly downplay Jewish victims out of woke animosity. (Witness the tearing down of hostage flyers.) But I could also see how a well-meaning desire to honor ALL these children (who lost their families to the Nazis while being saved by Mr. Winton) might lead someone writing promo materials for a movie to use a descriptor like “central European” to describe the kids – without realizing or intending to overlook the Jews.
Thoughtful and well-researched comment. Thank you.
But “central European” contains exactly zero information about the issue. Why not “mostly Jewish”? It’s accurate, still shorter than “central European”, and points to the heart of the conflict with a qualifier indicating that there’s something left out for the sake of brevity.
I agree totally and we must not forget that the “ heart of the conflict” was the intent of the Nazis to murder all Jewish people and other “undesirables” who did not conform to the master race requirements.
This is as absurd as writing a history of the Critical Theory of the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School (one of the ideological roots of the contemporary Woke Left) without mentioning that its sponsor (Felix Weil) and its first-generation members were all Jewish: Max Horkheimer, Friedrich Pollock, Theodor Adorno (Wiesengrund), Herbert Marcuse, Carl Grünberg, Erich Fromm, Walter Benjamin, Leo Löwenthal, Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer.
By the way, the Frankfurt School’s (pre-1933 & post-1951) headquarters, the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt/Germany, was founded in 1923 and officially opened in 1924 (with Austrian Marxist scholar Carl Grünberg as its first director), so we can celebrate its centennial this year!
(The Institute was shut down in 1933 by the Gestapo—not surprisingly, since Nazis aren’t very fond of Jewish Marxists. It was reopened by Horkheimer in 1951, and has existed continuously ever since.)
It was rather an oversight in failing to acknowledge that most of the children were Jewish, although my father was always clear that he was saving children, not just Jewish children. That even comes out in the film during his conversation with the Rabbi.
Something most movie-goers will not realise is how well Anthony Hopkins portrays my father, Nicholas Winton. At times it seems as though I’m really looking at Pa on the screen. It’s very emotional for me to watch.
In one of his ‘letters to the editor’ from May 1939 written to generate more support (raise money, attract foster families) he wrote “there is a difference between passive goodness and active goodness which is in my opinion, the giving of one’s time and energy in the alleviation of pain and suffering. It entails going out, finding and helping those in suffering and danger and not merely leading an exemplary life, in the purely passive way of doing no wrong.”
When I tell my father’s story on stage it is very powerful reminder to us all to be actively engaged in making the world a better place – even if only in a small way.
Thank you for weighing in here; I’m a huge fan of your dad. I would add that the reason that most of the children needed saving, though, was because they were Jewish. Your dad’s concern was clearly for human welfare regardless of faith (“one life” doesn’t care what faith the life adheres to!); it’s just that it was the Jewish children who were most endangered at that time.
Thank you for continuing to tell your father’s story.
I’m coming late to this thread because I have only just seen the film. I was concerned when reading about the trailer (and watching it) and other comments about the lack of recognition that the children were Jewish. However, having seen the film, I got the impression that Nicholas Winton’s over-riding concern was to save *children* who were in dire need. It’s true that the reason for their need was because they were Jewish but, without doubt, I’m sure he would have done the same for any children. I felt that there was a lot of recognition in the film that the children were Jewish, both in terms of the danger that brought them in Czechoslovakia and the difficulty in getting help in Britain. It was a marvellous, important film and I wouldn’t want its impact to be diverted by criticism that, I think, misses the mark.
That’s my opinion about the film; my opinion about BBC coverage of Israel is something else 🙁