Winton train arrives in London - Channel 4 News »
Posted By gamahuche 3 months, 3 weeks ago in News
A steam train recreating the journey of hundreds of child evacuees, rescued from the Nazi's by a man dubbed Britain's Oscar Schindler, arrives at Liverpool Street Station.
Seventy years after Sir Nicholas Winton organised for 669 Jewish children to travel from Prague to London to escape concentration camps, some of the survivors retrace their journey.
Sir Nicholas, who celebrated his 100th birthday in May, was at Liverpool Street Station to see the steam train arrive.
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gamahuche
"I would rather be a square peg than fit in a pigeon hole" -
an essay which won me the "Lamb Essay Prize" at the Religious ...
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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There may be some more detailed, fuller accounts emerging soon, in which case I'll add what I find on to this thread.
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It must have been an amazing trip for the survivors but I believe that the rest of the train was filled with schoolchildren of today - an educational experience beyond parallel.-
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hyperbola3 months, 3 weeks ago
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With due respect to Winton, I continue to find it sad and unacceptable that we applaud these actions from decades ago but do nothing to stop similar zionist crimes against humanity going on daily right now. Time to return the over seven million christians and moslem ethnic cleansed by zionists to their homes and property.
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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FTA
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The last of eight trains was due to leave on the day war broke out. On 1 September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and all the borders were closed. None of the 250 children on board the last train or their families were every heard from again.
Sir Nicholas has said many times that the vision that haunts him most is the families waiting at Liverpool Street for the train that never arrived.
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This is not the clearest of articles so let me clarify so that there will be no room for confusion that the reference to the "families waiting" concerns the British families who were waiting to take care of the children who were arriving in London. -
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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Here's a good overview, also from Channel 4, of what led up to Sir Nicholas' project.
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I was particularly interested in the involvement of the British Council, which I didn't know about because both my mother and aunt, who were British, were working for the BC at this time and must inevitably been at least cognisant of what was going on. Its far too late for me to ask them about it, alas. -
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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http://www.thestate.com/134/story/928633.html?stor...
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Winton's story did not emerge until 1988, when his wife found correspondence referring to the prewar events.
"My wife didn't know about it for 40 years after our marriage, but there are all kinds of things you don't talk about even with your family," Winton said in 1999. "Everything that happened before the war actually didn't feel important in the light of the war itself."
Winton's wife persuaded him to have his story officially documented. A film about Winton's heroism won an International Emmy Award in 2002, and then-Prime Minister Tony Blair praised him as "Britain's Schindler," after the German businessman Oskar Schindler, who also saved Jewish lives during the war.
Winton rejected the comparison and the description of himself as a hero. Unlike Schindler, he said, his life had never been in danger.
He has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and honored in the Czech Republic. A statue of Winton was unveiled at Prague's central station before the train left on Tuesday.
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That's the first that I heard about this statue - a trip to Prague next week! -
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Mikunited3 months, 3 weeks ago
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It was a real shame that I couldn't be at Liverpool Street to meet this train.At least my body couldn't make it,but my heart and soul was there.If only we all had 10% of this mans indefatigable spirit,the World would be a little closer, to being as it should be.Thanks ever so much for running with this story.
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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It was very much my heart's desire to be on that memorial train but for some reason I din't take the necessary steps. If I'd managed to "fix" it I'd have had to cancel because of the misadventure of our beloved Maruska.
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BTW if some better British media comes through please pick it up and post again!
The Channel 4 cameras were hardly in the right place!
I have some serious commitments this weekend and am all bandaged up still.
He is a PHENOMENAL man.
He ran into this situation completely by chance, visiting an old friend from Engand in Prague.
He foresaw what was going to happpen before one single Czech person had been sent to a concentration camp - a veritable psychic intuition. After that he managed to cut through the layers of red tape - both Central European and British. - and convinced the parents of the children that he would bring them to safety.
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CRYMTYPHON3 months, 3 weeks ago
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We are surrounded by the dead.
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Not by their ghosts, but by their decisions.
Their courage and cruelty, beauty and brutality, build our present lives;
just as we now build the world for those not yet born.
Choose someone from the past;
they needn't be dead yet.
That old man on the park bench, enjoying the sun?
His name is Nicholas Winton; he is 99.
What had he to do with you or me or here or now?
Breathe.
You are alive.
Good. Now, picture a scene in 1938 Czechoslovakia
(black and white, because the 30's had no color).
picture a long line of soldiers and citizens, Germans and Czechs;
they form something like a bucket-brigade, passing burdens
from hand to hand.
The line is passing children from hand to hand,
- and tossing them into a fire.
Their faces are serious; not evil! This is hard work but they keep up
a rhythm, pass a child on, rest, catch another child, pass it on,
on to the fire.
What you picture is not allegory; merely condensed history.
Imagine a second line, smaller and more ragged, that pulls the children
from the flames.
Throws them aboard a train that is ever-so-slowly leaving the flames
behind.
Finish the picture; zoom away and frame it with a vast crowd of people
watching; just watching.
The old man on the bench, we picked at random, Mr. Winton?
- he led the line that pulled children from the fire.
He was an English stockbroker (say boring )
Visited Prague in 1938, saw thousands of Jewish refugees and their
children,
- and began organizing help from his hotel room.
For nine months he lobbied to get British visas for the
refugee children. They required Winton to find a foster
family and a £50 guarantee for each child.
Still, he arranged for 669 kids to escape on eight trains from
Prague to London.
A ninth train packed with 250 children was to leave the day
that Britain entered the war;
it never left the station.
None of its passengers were seen again.
So what?
Breathe again.
Still alive?
Life is precious because someone,
somewhere now in the grave,
or sitting damned old on a park bench,
- had the courage to act when others did not.
We the living, are framed, surrounded, defined, drowned in acts of
courage done by those we will never meet.
It's all around us; a sea of past brave acts,
like the sunlight or the wind or anything which manages
to be everywhere yet still miraculous.
So: to Sir Nicholas Winton, enjoying the weak sunlight of our
discontented winter of 2008: thank you!
i wrote the above last year, after gama first posted about winton. I hope he doesn't get mad I repost it but oh well. .-
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GWHayduke3 months, 3 weeks ago
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Very nice Crymty.
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It occurred to me as I re-read your eloquent musings, that living in fear of something....anything......, cripples one's ability to achieve fulfillment.
Oppression is a fear-based tool used by the weak hearted to sway the unknowing. -
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gamahuche3 months, 3 weeks ago
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For a few seconds CMT I indulged in contemplating all the most vile, vicious and immensely painful forms of retribution that one human could exact against another.
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Then the Peace of the Lord - or some other incomparable form of transcendence transmuted my brain into a spongey mass of discombobulated cells, formless and boundless, and Mercy stole into my soul, sublimating my consciousness into pure ether.
It seems to me that indicates that you are to be granted the right to post again and again and again, according to your desires but that I am not required to offer any guarantee that I will ever provide another opportunity to recycle the same old same old!
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The man is pure gold!
I was too shy to shake his hand but not to look him in the eye..
His eyes were slightly rheumy but bright blue. He was as sharp as a whistle, a lshade deaf - or was it just a protective shyness?.
It was about 12 years ago, a showing of a film about him at the Jewish Cultural Centre in Prague.
I've been priveleged to encounter many wise men and women from a wide variety of traditions.
He and the Dalai Lama and Charlotte Selver and Phil Mellman are my 4 top equals.
Three of the above reached extremely venerabe ages but have all crossed the Great Water. The fourth already sups with the immortals.
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