Sir Nick-a-Lot

 

Please print this post and create some heroism at Friday night dinner table....
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Last week's tribute to a Jewish hero challenged your table to consider the definition of a moral compass.

This week another latter-day Jewish hero steps up to the plate.

Sir Nicholas Winton organized the rescue of 669 children destined for Nazi concentration camps. 

(He died in 2015 at age 106.)

And he kept his story secret for fifty years. Not even his wife knew about it, until she discovered an album in their attic with the names and photos of the children he rescued.

He didn't seek any attention, but he was gracious enough to allow his story to be told. Watch this.

Here's the gist of his heroism:

It was not a straightforward matter: the British bureaucracy was complacent and slow, believing there was no urgency as war was deemed unlikely, and the government demanded bonds of £50 – no small sum in those days – to sponsor the children. The arrangements were, nevertheless, better than those of countries such as the US and Australia, to whom Winton appealed in vain. “If America had only agreed to take them too, I could have saved at least 2,000 more,” he said.

Frustrated by the slowness of the British authorities, Winton made newspaper appeals and personally organised the children’s placements, with no time for checking suitability or haggling over who should go where. As the situation in Czechoslovakia grew more desperate following the German occupation of the entire country in March 1939, he took to forging the Home Office entry permits. That summer eight rail transports were conducted. A ninth Kindertransport, which was due to leave on 1 September 1939 with 250 more children, was cancelled by the Germans, and most of those who would have been on board were subsequently transported to concentration camps. Nevertheless, Winton and his colleagues had saved at least 664 children: 561 of them Jewish, 52 Unitarians, 34 Catholics and 17 others.

Here's a detailed story about how he pulled it off.

Britain's Chief Rabbi Mirvis said:

"He lived to see thousands of descendants of those whose lives he saved who were proud to call themselves members of his family, and who were inspired by his example to undertake outstanding charitable, humanitarian and educational initiatives. I knew him to be a gentleman of unfailing old-world courtesy, with a warm heart and a ready self-deprecating wit."

Question for your table: What's greater - his rescue of the 669 children, or his humility?


Enjoy the podcast and Shabbat Shalom


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