The REAL 'British Schindler': Nicholas Winton's former daughter in law reveals why modest stockbroker who rescued 669 Jewish children from the Nazis rejected comparisons with factory owner Oskar - as new biopic One Life hits cinemas
When Nicholas Winton went on holiday to Czechoslovakia in December 1938, he witnessed a scene that was to change the course of his life.
In an overflowing refugee camp outside the capital Prague, the 29-year-old stockbroker saw thousands of Jewish families shivering in makeshift tents following the Nazis’ seizure of the predominantly German-speaking Sudetenland.
Expelled from their homes, they had lost everything. With nowhere to go, and the Nazi takeover of the rest of Czechoslovakia imminent, a frightening fate awaited them. They were desperate to find a means of escape.
Their suffering affected Winton so deeply that he resolved to do everything he could to help the most vulnerable among them: the children.
So on his return to London he set himself the herculean task of overcoming official apathy and navigating the sluggish bureaucracy of the Home Office.
Nicholas Winton (pictured, centre) brokered a deal with the UK Home Office to bring trainloads of Jewish children from Prague to London’s Liverpool Street Station
Winton is played by Anthony Hopkins (pictured) in biographical drama One Life
Sir Nicholas’s public image as a self-effacing humanitarian concealed a complex character, full of contradictions and with some surprising flaws
Against the odds, he managed to broker a deal: as long as a £50 bond and an adoptive family could be secured for every child, they would be allowed into the country.
Over nine months – from January 1939 to the outbreak of World War II in September – Winton set about the colossal administrative mission of putting his plan into action.
He liaised with associates in Prague to identify the children most at risk, found the ‘adopters’ here, organised all the necessary documentation – and so the Czech Kindertransport began, bringing trainloads of Jewish children from Prague to London’s Liverpool Street Station.
In all, his rescue mission saved the lives of 669 children, most of whose families later perished in the Holocaust.
He was duly lauded as the ‘British Schindler’, after the German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who saved 1,200 Jews by employing them in his factories.
Now his amazing story has been made into a film. One Life stars Sir Anthony Hopkins as Nicky in later life, with Johnny Flynn playing him as a younger man.
I refer to him as Nicky because I was the partner of his son Nick for 13 years (we lived together for 11 of them), and that was what all his intimates called him.
As he was in effect my father-in-law, I saw a great deal of him and grew to know him very well. Which is why I can state, with some confidence, that – his fine acting skills notwithstanding – Sir Anthony will have had a tough time capturing more than a fraction of the real Nicholas Winton.
His public image as a self-effacing humanitarian concealed a complex character, full of contradictions and with some surprising flaws.
Nicky died in 2015 at the age of 106, and he sometimes remarked how nonsensical it was to be famous for an act that had occupied a mere nine months of his long life.
After the war, Nicky pretty much forgot about the Kindertransport chapter; he didn’t believe in dwelling on the past.
He married his Danish wife Grete, had children and built a house near Maidenhead, Berkshire. He became a businessman, with varying degrees of success, and after the birth and early death of a son with Down’s Syndrome, he got involved in charity work for Mencap.
By the time I got to know him he’d long been retired, spending his time gardening and attending Rotary Club dinners.
He was a lifelong socialist (his own greatest hero was the post-war prime minister Clement Attlee) and, as I am a small-C conservative, we were often political sparring partners.
He admitted he mainly bought a daily newspaper to see how his stocks and shares were doing, which I considered somewhat capitalistic for a Leftie, although it didn’t strike him as at all incongruous.
I was less amused when he told me it was a good thing that America’s power in the world was waning and it would soon be overtaken by China.
Above: Sir Nicholas with one of the children he rescued from Czechoslovakia; Sir Nicholas in the Czech Republic in 2014, receiving the Order of the White Lion, the country’s highest honour
Sir Anthony filming scenes as Nicholas Winton in One Life, which was released in January in UK cinemas
For someone who understood the evils of totalitarianism I found it disturbing that he should prefer it to a democracy, even a blatantly imperfect one. Had his clear-sightedness during the 1930s deserted him?
He claimed not to care much for the many ‘gongs’ he’d received for establishing the Kindertransport – including an OBE in 1983 and a knighthood in 2003 – but was openly miffed when told he wouldn’t receive Israel’s ‘Righteous Among The Nations’ honour because that was for gentiles who had saved Jews. As he was of Jewish descent himself, he didn’t qualify.
And I began to observe something else, a trait I had come across in others of a Left-wing disposition: while he had a clear compassion for humanity – for the nameless masses – he could be hard-hearted with regard to individuals close to him.
I remember his son Nick telling me how for years he was miserable at his boarding school – lonely, bullied, homesick. Not every child is cut out for that austere type of schooling.
But his father ignored his pleas to be allowed home. Letters went unanswered. The typical attitude of a certain class of Englishman of Nicky’s generation? Perhaps. But, to my mind, unnecessarily cold.
When the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed almost a quarter of a million people and devastated communities in over a dozen countries, Nicky was deeply moved and donated generously to the relief effort.
‘We must help,’ he proclaimed. ‘We’ve got to give so much it hurts.’
But a few years later when I despairingly told him my father had suffered a massive stroke and would have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, Nicky responded: ‘A person can get used to anything.’
It was shockingly callous and I wondered if he’d have been quite so nonchalant were he the person having to get used to permanent paralysis. But when I think of Nicky, I don’t dwell on that upsetting episode. Because most of the time he was an engaging companion, with a remarkable personality, which isn’t something you can say about a lot of people.
So I prefer to recall his funny quips and original take on things. Some time around his 100th birthday, he said it is always assumed that a person’s longevity is due to their optimistic outlook.
‘But I’m always predicting some imminent political or economic disaster,’ he pointed out, ‘so if negativity had anything to do with it, I’d have been dead long ago.’
I loved that he was so forthright, always saying what was on his mind rather than what was expected of him.
He once told a gathering attended by a number of rabbis: ‘Nobody really believes in God, not even the most outwardly religious people.’ (Nicky had no time for religion, once telling me: ‘People use it as an excuse for making trouble.’)
On another occasion, at which he was asked to speak about the Holocaust, he said: ‘Why do we keep going on about the Holocaust and the war? We never learn from the past.’
He advised everyone to focus on the present. ‘We have to start teaching people about ethics, because they are sadly missing from public life today.’
An audience might be expecting him to express platitudes about, say, inter-racial tolerance, when instead he would launch into the topic of global overpopulation and demand to know why politicians weren’t doing something about it. Or he might simply reminisce about his boyhood in London and the horse-drawn milk carts that used to rattle down his street.
He was his own man, and I admired him for it.
To his credit he always rejected the ‘British Schindler’ label. He recognised that, unlike Schindler, who rescued his Jewish employees from under the noses of the Nazis, risking his own life in the process, he had carried out his mission from the safety of his Hampstead flat and was never in any danger.
He had the good grace to tell me he considered my mother, Vali Racz, to have been the more heroic – she secretly sheltered a group of Jewish friends in her home in Nazi-occupied Budapest, thus saving them from the death camps. She gave nothing away under Gestapo interrogation and was extremely lucky to survive.
I appreciated those sentiments of his, and believe they strengthened the bond between us. For a bond there surely was. Even after his son and I split up he’d ring me from time to time and ask me to drive down to Berkshire to have lunch with him. And so we would set the world to rights over three courses at some favourite local eatery.
He was always a hearty eater, dismissive of dieting fads and healthy-eating advice. ‘Low-fat, low-sugar, low-salt. The world is full of diets but there are more fat people around than ever.’
Johnny Flynn portrays a young Sir Nicholas in the biographical film
To his credit Sir Nicholas always rejected the ‘British Schindler’ label. He recognised that, unlike Schindler, he had carried out his mission out of danger from his Hampstead flat
Sir Anthony won’t capture the full, complicated Nicky, because he didn’t know him and I’m guessing the scriptwriter didn’t either
His keenness to savour life to the full is an example to us all. Many people, as they grow old, face approaching death with equanimity. But I don’t think Nicky did. Even as a centenarian he wasn’t ready to depart because, as he put it, ‘I want to know what happens next’.
Well, he would have been gratified by what’s next: being played on the big screen by a thespian as eminent as Sir Anthony Hopkins, who will doubtless give a winning portrayal, cementing Nicky’s image as a great British hero.
But Sir Anthony won’t capture the full, complicated Nicky, because he didn’t know him and I’m guessing the scriptwriter didn’t either.
Still, I look forward to seeing One Life when it comes out. And in particular the scene that reprises Nicky’s appearance in the audience of Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life TV show in 1988.
That day he was unaware that he was surrounded by dozens of his rescued ‘kinder’ and to his amazement they suddenly stood up to make themselves known. I’m sure I will well up. I always do.