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Amanda 5/4/09 Period 1 **__ Nicholas Winton  __** Nicholas Winton was born on May 19th, 1909. He was a rescuer; this label fits him because in1939 he saved over 669 children from the Holocaust. How did this occur? Well it started out in 1938 when his friend invited him to the British Embassy. When Nicholas Winton went to the British Embassy, the British Team asked for him to help out in working with the refugee camps. While spending those couple of months in Prague, he soon realized that the Nazis were on there way to invade. Immediately, he recognized that danger was approaching where he’s been staying, so he made every single effort to get the children out of the reach of Nazi power.

While Nicholas Winton was dealing with all this, so many people mentioned to him that, “The commission was dealing with the elderly and vulnerable and people in the camps kept telling me that nobody was doing anything for the children,” so he took the people’s words into his own hands. To plan it all out he went to Wenceslas Square, in a hotel dinning room, and set up a office on one of the tables. ‘Englishman of Wenceslas Square’ was what people called him, and the word got out about his plan, so all these parents rushed to the hotel to convince him to have their children on the list, so their children won’t get hurt by the Nazis. As more and more children came he always had the feeling that each group needed him more, and he felt that as he went to each group each one felt more urgent than the other. Even though it took him till early 1939 he finally set up the organization for the Czech Kinder transport in Prague, before he went back to London to handle all the necessary matters from Britain.

Than when he finally got back to London he started right away to get all those children out of the country. The British Committee for Refugees joined with him and they worked together to make sure each children had a foster home parent, with a 50 pound guarantee, in those days a small fortune. To help the parents with the transport he raised money so when contributions by the parent’s couldn’t cover the costs, they wouldn’t have to worry about their children not getting a good home.

As the war kept coming closer and closer, he managed to get 669 children on to eight trains to London, in nine months of working that hard, it was all worth it in the end. This goes to show how much of a rescuer Nicholas Winton is, he was just simply inspired but helping a team out, and than decided to make a huge impact by helping children from the Holocaust. That’s a true hero, and true rescuer.

Citation: __The Holocaust,__ Poizner, Susan. “Winton’s Wartime Gesture.” //__The Jerusalem Report,__// (August 31, 1998), __BBC News.__ Honor for British. http://www.jewishvirtuallibary.org/jsource/biography/Winton.html