Big Chuck Opens Up His World War II File: The Incredible Story of Nicholas Winton!

Nicholas Winton was an English stock broker when he visited Czechoslovakia in 1938 just after Hitler had invaded that country.  He saw the suffering and the despair of the Jews who were living in ghettos and on the streets.  The plight of the children especially moved him.

Winton, with some high powered connections back home, organized "freedom trains" to carry refugee children out of the war zone and to the safety of other countries, mostly his native England.  He did this under great peril from the German authorities.  Winton, almost single handily, was able to save 669 mostly Jewish children from certain death.  Many of the children never saw their parents again and looked at Nicholas Winton as a father figure.

Winton told no one about his war efforts, not even his wife.  In 1988 his wife found a tattered scrapbook in their attic with the names of hundreds of children, and their addresses and parent's names, listed in the handwriting of her husband.  When she showed it to him he told her the story.  The press soon found out about it and dubbed him "England's Schindler."

What you are about to view is one of the most moving videos I have ever seen.

In the late 1980s Nicholas Winton was invited to the taping of a BBC television show about World War II.  Little did he know the surprise he was in for.

The program turned out to be a surprise tribute to his heroism during the war.  When the host asks if there is anyone in the studio audience who owes his or her life to Nicholas Winton almost the entire audience around him stands up.  The humbled and totally surprised Winton looks around with tears in his eyes at the living testimony to his courageous actions fifty years before.

It is an unmistakable illustration of how one man can truly make a difference.

He is now 104 years old and a drive is under way to honor him with a Nobel Peace Prize.