Sir Nicholas Winton and the Human Cost of "Peace for our Time"

Sir Nicholas Winton and the human cost of "Peace For Our Time".

By David Vaughan in Radio

Prague, Prague, Czech Republic,
September 28, 2007

It was 69 years ago this week, just after midnight on the night from
29th to 30th September 1938, that the British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain, his French counterpart, Edouard Daladier, Hitler and
Mussolini, signed the Munich Agreement. It is now remembered as the
most notorious symbol of Chamberlain's tragically flawed policy of
appeasement. The "piece of paper" which he waved on his return to
Heston Aerodrome, just west of London, was to be a guarantee of "peace
for our time", and Czechoslovakia was the price that was to be paid,
as the four most powerful men in Europe agreed to allow Nazi Germany
to annex a large part of the country. The next day, German troops
marched unopposed into the Sudetenland, the mainly German-speaking
border regions of Czechoslovakia.

Sir Nicholas Winton

Despite the popularity of appeasement in Britain, seen as a way of
avoiding a repetition of the carnage of the First World War, there
were also many who were horrified by the decision to leave
Czechoslovakia to its fate. Among them was the young Nicholas Winton.
"Nobody that I knew at the time, who had thought that Hitler was a
menace, thought that the crisis was over. I think we were just
incredulous."


And when he came to Prague a few weeks later, Nicholas Winton found a
similar incredulity mixed with anger and bitterness. At the time he
was working at London's stock exchange, but he was firmly left wing,
and knew many leading members of the Labour Party. When Hitler marched
into the Czech borderlands, he made a decision that was to transform
his life. He decided to travel to Prague to help refugees who had fled
to the city after the Sudetenland had been swallowed up by the Reich.
The subsequent story of how he was to save nearly 700 Jewish children
in what came to be known as the Kindertransports, has become legendary.
At 98, Sir Nicholas Winton - he was knighted in 2002 in honour of his
service to humanity - still has the energy and sharpness of wit of
someone at least thirty years his junior. During the summer, I visited
him at his home near London, and over a pint of beer at the local pub,
we discussed politics, past and present. It was hard to believe that
at the time of Munich, Nicholas Winton was already nearly thirty years
old.

The story of the refugee crisis that followed Munich and accelerated
in the months preceding the outbreak of World War Two has many modern
echoes. In this programme, through the memories of Sir Nicholas Winton
and some of the children whose lives he saved, we shall be telling
that story.

Hitler comes to power
Adolf Hitler

Events began to unfold in 1933, with Hitler's rise to power in
Germany. At the time Czechoslovakia seemed an island of stability, and
thousands of German opposition figures fled to the country. Among them
was the family of Susanne Medas, who was later to become one of the
children saved by Sir Nicholas Winton.

"My father was Richard Bernstein, and his job in Berlin was to be the
political editor of Vorwaerts, which was the party paper of the Social
Democrat Party. I believe that most of the editors of Vorwaerts came
to Prague at the time. Some of them went on to France, but a number of
them did come to Prague. In a way, as I was fortunate enough to flee
with my brother, my mother and my father, it didn't seem a very
drastic change, and all I do remember is that for the whole time we
lived in Prague, we encountered no anti-Semitism and no hostility
whatever."

The German exiles included numerous very well known figures, such as
the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch and most famously of all, the
novelist, Thomas Mann, the author of The Magic Mountain and Death in
Venice. Czech Radio archives have a rare recording of Thomas Mann from
October 1936, in which he praises Czechoslovakia's continuing
commitment to democracy, while much of the region slips into
dictatorship.

The Munich Agreement
Munich Agreement

But Prague was living on borrowed time. Hitler was breathing down
Czechoslovakia's neck, and with the Munich Agreement of September
1938, everything changed - not just in the Sudetenland, but even in
Prague itself, as Susanne Medas, who was attending Prague's German
grammar school at the time, remembers.

"I went to school one morning - this was in October 1938 - and was
just going up the staircase when the girls who were standing at the
top of the stairs shouted in German, 'Here comes the Jewish pig.' I
was very surprised, because prior to that there was not difference
between the Jewish and the non-Jewish children. When I came home and
told them this, my parents decided that I wasn't going to go back to
school. I found that on occupying the Sudetenland, the Germans had
also been able to change the teachers in our school in central Prague.
I couldn't understand why until a few years ago when I learned that it
was actually a private school, so that the Czechoslovak government had
no jurisdiction over it."

Prague became the focal point for tens of thousands of Czechs and
Germans - many of them Jewish - fleeing the Sudetenland. The result
was a refugee crisis on a huge scale.

Prague was left defenceless and the Sudetenland's new Nazi rulers were
barking that once they got hold of these refugees - who were cowering,
as they put it, under the protection of the Czech government - they
would show no mercy. If Chamberlain had expected Munich to bring calm
and stability to Central Europe, he could not have been more wrong.

Lenka Reinerova
The Prague writer, Lenka Reinerova, remembers.

"Because we had been a democratic republic and a neighbour of big
Germany, we had a very big anti-fascist emigration here. And now came
Munich, and many of these people were here. From one day to the next
they were in great danger, because nobody knew what would happen
during the next days. There were prominent people and unknown people,
and it was necessary at that moment to get them, as soon as possible,
out of the country."

Nicholas Winton comes to Prague
Nicholas Winton

News of the refugee crisis reached Britain thanks to the work of
several international refugee organizations active in Prague. Nicholas
Winton's involvement began more or less by chance, thanks to his
political engagement.

"My great friend, Martin Blake, who was a master at Westminster
School, was also very left wing, and we had followed very closely what
was going on on the continent. Every winter I used to take a number of
his pupils to winter sports. I did it because we got a free holiday.
Right at the last moment, we were going to winter sports in 1938, and
he rang me up and said, 'I've cancelled it. I'm going to Prague. I
think what I'm doing there will interest you. If you're interested,
come and follow me.'"

And so, what was he doing?

"I don't think he had an actual brief to do anything at that time, but
I think that if it really was a brief, it was to find out at first
hand what was going on. And I was just tagging along."

And Prague at that time was filled with refugees from Nazi Germany and
the Sudetenland, people who had fled for political or racial reasons...
"Yes. Some of the people who arrived in Prague at that time were
already two times refugees. They'd fled from Germany to the
Sudetenland as sanctuary. Then they'd fled again for sanctuary from
the Sudetenland to Prague, and those who did not have friends or
relatives were just put in Nissen huts. So things were pretty grim at
that time."

And the work you were doing was to try to get these people out of
Czechoslovakia. Was it clear to you and the people you spoke to in
Czechoslovakia that the 'peace for our time' after Munich was not
going to last?

"It was only clear insofar as that is what all my left wing colleagues
felt. When you map what Hitler did in marching through Europe up to
the time of the Sudetenland, and knowing what the position was at that
time, you couldn't really feel that it was going to stop. Why should
he stop there when everything was working in his favour. It was fairly
clear to us. And, of course, there were five committees in
Czechoslovakia looking after these displaced people. Now, all of them
had lists of children, where the parents had signed that they were
willing to let the children go. Now, all those people would not have
wanted to let their children go unless they thought that something
terrible was going to happen."

Yes, this was before Hitler had occupied Prague in March 1939.
Technically speaking, what remained of Czechoslovakia was still a free
and democratic country.

"Yes, it was before Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia."

Saving the children
Nicholas Winton

Nicholas Winton realized that it was the children who were most in
danger, and this became the focus of his work.

"I was told that although there was an organization which was trying
to get out the elder people, they had no permission from the British
government and no financial means to get out the children. So I merely
said that, if it were possible, I would do it. And in fact it wasn't
really difficult. It was a lot of hard work, but it wasn't difficult,
because the Home Office made no problems at all about granting visas.
The only problem was to get permits for the children to enter England
and to fulfil the condition laid down by the Home Office, which was
that I could only bring in a child if I had a family that would look
after them."

At this stage Nicholas Winton was not working in any official capacity.
"I was only in Prague on holiday from my work, and I was only there
for two weeks. After an awful row with my boss, I got it extended to
three weeks. But when I came back and started bringing the children
out, I was still working at my job on the stock exchange. I was never
free to give a hundred percent of my time to this."

The head of the British Committee for the Refugees from
Czechoslovakia, Doreen Warriner, had written to Nicholas Winton's
employer, a merchant bank in the City of London, asking for him to be
given more time off. His boss was not much impressed, writing with
some sarcasm: "I would sooner you were taking a rest here rather than
doing heroic work with thousands of poor devils who are suffering
through no fault of their own." So Nicholas Winton ended up working
for the refugees in his spare time - from his home in Hampstead, and
with the help of just one secretary. Britain's interior ministry, the
Home Office, was also not particularly helpful.

German troops enter Prague
March 1939

A few weeks later, events took a dramatic turn. On 15 March 1939,
German troops occupied what remained of Czechoslovakia, after Slovakia
had split away under Nazi pressure. Susanne Medas remembers.
"We were standing on Wenceslas Square when the German tanks rolled in.
People were given flags to wave, because we were supposed to be happy
to see the Germans coming. But there was no flag-waving. On the
contrary, people to the right and to the left of me were weeping. They
knew, of course, very well, what was in store for them."
With Prague under direct German rule, the Gestapo began rounding up
anyone considered politically unreliable, starting with those who had
fled previously from Germany. Anyone who was Jewish, whether they were
German or Czech, was in direct peril. A growing number of Jewish
families, realizing there was little chance for the adults to escape,
tried to get their children onto Nicholas Winton's lists.

At this stage Britain was not yet at war with Germany, and amazingly
the German authorities did nothing to stop Nicholas Winton continuing
his work.

"There was no opposition from the Nazis at all. There are pictures
which you can see, where the Gestapo were helping to put the children
onto the trains."

By train to England

The children were sent in a series of special trains to England. One
of them was Susanne Medas.

"We arrived in England at the beginning of July, and many of us have
very clear memories of Liverpool Street Station, which now looks quite
different. We were taken into a large waiting room or drill hall. We
had labels round our necks with a number, but also with our
destination, like a parcel. On my label it said Cambridge, because I
was destined to go to Cambridge.

"I remember that a young American student, who also spoke German, came
along, and she took myself and two other much younger children to the
train, and we went by train to Cambridge.

"I was nearly sixteen, I was very confident, but there was a little
girl of five who was anything but fearless. She could only speak
Czech, so she clung to me. When we arrived at Cambridge the idea was
that she should go straight to her foster family, a charming young
couple who were at the station to meet her. But she wouldn't let go of
my hand, so I was asked if I would mind if we first went to that
family. I didn't mind at all. We got to the house. The people were so
nice and the little girl was sweet, and they had prepared her room
with friezes and toys and everything else, but she wasn't letting go
of my hand. Eventually they had a teddy bear, and they showed it to
her, and she had to let go of my hand to hold this toy. Then the young
American girl motioned to me that perhaps it was time that we left.
"My new foster parents came to collect me and it was so embarrassing
for them as well as for myself, because they were a newly married
couple and they were kissing and cuddling, and there I was in the same
room with them. I didn't stay with this family very long, because I
knew that there was a refugees' committee. I went to the refugees'
committee, to a remarkable woman called Rita Burkhill, who found
another family for me."

Susanne Medas had originally come from Germany, but many of the other
children were from Czech Jewish families. Among them were Alice
Klimova and Ruth Rulcova, both of whom we have interviewed in the past
on Radio Prague.

Alice Klimova: "My sister was too old. She was already sixteen, so I
went instead of her. This is how I got onto that children's transport.
By pure coincidence my sister managed to get onto the next transport,
so we were able to be there both. She was more than a sister. She was
a mother to me. I was very fortunate to have her there because
absolutely nobody from the family survived."

Ruth Rulcova: "I was seven at the time. I don't remember much about
the journey. It was a train journey and then on the boat. I do
remember standing on the platform at - probably - Victoria Station
with a big label on a piece of string round my neck with my name. And
then somebody claimed me, this strange couple, elderly people, with a
grown-up daughter and... a strange thing... we never have tea with
milk here. I never drank tea with milk, and they took me for a cup of
tea. They offered me a cup of tea and I said 'Yes'. I didn't want
milk. And then it was this strange black thick stuff. It was horrible
and I couldn't put enough sugar in it. And it still tasted terrible.
So that was my first experience of English tea."

A tragic fate
Nicholas Winton and Susanne Medas

Back in Prague the children's parents faced a grim future. Susanne Medas:
"I got to England at the beginning of July, and war didn't break out
until 3rd September, so there was the whole of July and August. During
that time I received some postcards and letters from my parents in
Prague. That stopped, of course, as soon as the war broke out and to
my great surprise, in January 1940, I received a postcard from my
father in Oslo in Norway. I couldn't understand what my parents were
doing in Norway, but I found out again many years later that the
Czechoslovak Red Cross had managed to get out of Czechoslovakia some
of these German anti-Nazis who were most threatened, who had been
refugees from Germany already. So my parents were in Oslo, but,
unfortunately, when the Germans occupied Norway my parents were taken
to Auschwitz, where they died."

Like Susanne Medas, Alice Klimova, did not find out about the fate of
her parents until after the war.

"It didn't sink in, actually, what happened. Absolutely nobody
survived. Only slowly, after I had my first child, I realized what it
means to have parents, grandparents for my children, somebody to lean
on, to have a background, and that's why I said, my sister was always
such a help."

It is a story that we hear again and again. Sir Nicholas Winton:
"I don't think any of the parents survived - perhaps an occasional one
or two. As far as I'm concerned it's a tragedy. On the other hand, it
does prove that we took the right children out."

The story of the children's transports has another tragic twist. All
through the summer of 1939 the transports continued, but on 1st
September, Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain declared
war on Germany.

"My work stopped the day war broke out. We had 250 children on Wilson
Station in Prague on 3rd September, which was our biggest transport.
War broke out and it was all over, nothing more could be done. I was
told that none of those children survived. I occasionally hear stories
of one or two, who they say had been on that train and did survive,
but I don't know."

In the transports that did get out 669 children were saved. Many are
still alive today, now in their 70s and 80s. When I joined a group of
the children at a reunion in Prague in 2002, I found it deeply moving.
Many have gone on to become high achievers, like the journalist Joe
Schlesinger, the writer Vera Gissing, or the filmmaker Karel Reisz,
who died five years ago. But what is perhaps still more moving is to
think that Nicholas Winton's children today have their own children
and grandchildren - several thousand in total - all of whom are alive
today in defiance of the insane logic of the Holocaust.