{"id":650,"date":"2009-09-04T13:41:01","date_gmt":"2009-09-04T12:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/?p=650"},"modified":"2009-09-04T13:50:54","modified_gmt":"2009-09-04T12:50:54","slug":"a-tribute-to-sir-nicholas-winton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/09\/04\/a-tribute-to-sir-nicholas-winton\/","title":{"rendered":"A tribute to Sir Nicholas Winton"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Not my usual sort of post but I have to pay tribute to Sir Nicholas Winton, a quiet, modest, great man.<\/p>\n

Sir Nicholas saved the lives of almost 700 Jewish children from Czechoslavakia in 1939 by arranging for them to leave mainland Europe and arrive in the UK after a tense journey through Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n

So modest was he that it was only relatively recently that those he saved, many very young children at the time, discovered who their saviour was.<\/p>\n

In a memorable TV program with Esther Rantzen, Sir Nicholas was brought into the studio on a pretence. His story was then told.<\/p>\n

It was then revealed that the woman sitting right next to him was, unbeknown to him, one of the young children he saved.<\/p>\n

Then, in one of the most moving moments of TV I can ever remember, Esther Rantzen asked anyone else in the audience who was on a Kindertransport arranged by Nicholas Winton to stand up. Every single member of the audience stood up.<\/p>\n

I cried buckets.<\/p>\n

There is a wonderful Jewish Talmudic saying:<\/p>\n

Whoever saves a single life, it is as if he had saved the whole world.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sanhedrin 4:5<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the truth of this is the number of children and grandchildren and, no doubt, great grandchildren who owe their existence to Sir Nicholas. They number in the thosuands.<\/p>\n

Sir Nicholas is now 100 years old. This week many of those he saved retraced their journey from Prague to London renewing friendships and sharing memories before a reunion with Sir Nicholas.<\/p>\n

I have to mention a tenuous connection to Sir Nicholas. When I was at school, one of my best friends was the son of a young boy saved by Nicholas Winton. He became one of the greatest British film directors of his \u00a0generation – Karel Reisz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Not my usual sort of post but I have to pay tribute to Sir Nicholas Winton, a quiet, modest, great man. Sir Nicholas saved the lives of almost 700 Jewish children from Czechoslavakia in 1939 by arranging for them to leave mainland Europe and arrive in the UK after a tense journey through Nazi Germany. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[325,324],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-kindertransport","tag-nicholas-winton","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}