Humanitarian Story of Sir Nicholas Winton

The internet is a wondrous world, which I love to explore, just as much as I do the cities I've visited across the world.  One time I stumbled on the story of Nicholas Winton.  We cannot always tell ahead of time who will do the extraordinary thing he did, but for hundreds of Czechoslovakian children, he was precisely the guardian angel they needed at the height of Nazi power.  His story helps me formulate The Human Algorithm, and more specifically figure out how to best encourage people to do good.

Nicholas Winton was en route to Switzerland for a skiing holiday in late 1938; a friend asked him to come to Prague, instead...

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht - "Night of the Broken Glass," the bloody Nazi attack on Jews - reached Prague in November 1938...

Everybody in Prague said, 'Look, there is no organization in Prague to deal with refugee children, nobody will let the children go on their own, but if you want to have a go, have a go.' And I think there is nothing that can't be done if it is fundamentally reasonable.

Reference: Nicholas Winton, The Power of Good.

Nicholas Winton and children

The situation was heartbreaking... Mothers tried desperately to get money to buy food for... their children.

From Czechoslovakia to Britain, it was The Long Day's Journey Into Night, for Sir Nicholas' 669 children. 



Nicholas Winton and 'children'

Sir Nicholas recently celebrated his 105th birthday, surrounded by some of the children he saved and their children.

Ruth Hálová is 88 and has flown over for the party from South Bohemia in the Czech Republic. Others have come from as far as New Zealand and the USA. Hálová was one of the children who came over on one of the Kindertransport journeys and she stayed with a British family throughout the war while her mother was in the concentration camp at Terezín, Czechoslovakia.

“I first met Nicky when he came to visit Yad Vashem in Jerusalem," Hálová told the Guardian. "I was there just visiting family and they phoned me at 10 o’clock at night and said: 'Nicholas Winton is here!' It was just amazing to meet him and to see him again today. It is never too long or too far to come and see Nicky.”

Reference: Sir Nicholas Winton: 105th birthday party for man who saved 669 children from the Nazis.