Sir Nicholas Winton, who has died at the age of 106
Sir Nicholas Winton, who became known as “the British Oskar Schindler” after saving hundreds of Jewish children from Nazi tyranny and slaughter in Czechoslovakia, has died aged 106, his family said. The unassuming hero, who saved the lives of 669 children in 1939 by sending them from Prague to London by train, died peacefully in his sleep at Wexham Park hospital in Slough, his son-in-law, Stephen Watson, said. His extraordinary humanitarian effort only became known in 1988 when his wife, Grete, found an old briefcase in the attic with lists of children and letters from their parents. His family took the scrapbook to Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life programme, where he was reunited on screen with one of the women he had saved. He was finally reunited with hundreds of “Winton children”, and their children. Several films have been made of his life story.
