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February 1, 2002/19 Shevat 5762, Vol. 54, No. 20
Film documents 'power of good'
LEISAH NAMM
Assistant Editor
Nicholas Winton, pictured in 1939, holds a child he helped rescue from Prague. Winton saved 669 Czechoslovak children by arranging their escape from German-occupied Czechoslovakia.
Photo courtesy of Fred Linch
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For nearly half a century, Englishman Nicholas Winton kept quiet about the lives of 669 children he saved during the few months before World War II. His secret was revealed in 1988 when his wife Greta, who has since died, discovered a scrapbook in their attic containing children's names and photographs and letters written by their parents.
The story behind this scrapbook is told in "The Power of Good: Nicholas Winton," a documentary that describes how Winton rescued children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and arranged for them to travel through Hitler's Germany to Britain.
A video screening of this documentary will be shown during a pre-opening reception of the Phoenix Jewish Film Festival at 7:45 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 16, at the Sylvia Plotkin Judaica Museum of Temple Beth Israel.
Director Matej Minac, who also wrote and directed last year's film festival hit "All My Loved Ones," will speak after the screening. "All My Loved Ones" tells the story of a Czech Jewish family from which the 10-year-old boy becomes a "Winton child" - and the family's only Holocaust survivor.
Minac first learned about Winton in 1998 from a few sentences in "Pearls of Childhood," a memoir written by British author Vera Gissing. He was intrigued by the story and wrote a treatment for a feature film, part of it based on those two paragraphs.
He contacted Gissing, who disclosed that she was one of "Winton's children" and introduced him to Winton.
Minac was surprised that Winton - 90 years old at the time - was "in perfect shape and he remembered everything perfectly."
Winton agreed to share his story with Minac.
In 1938, Winton, then a 29-year-old London stockbroker, was ready to leave for a skiing holiday in Switzerland when he received a call from a friend asking him to cancel his trip and instead travel to Prague, the capital of former Czechoslovakia.
Convinced that war was imminent and heartbroken by a visit to a refugee camp during this visit, Winton, with the assistance of a few volunteers, started an operation to send refugee children from Prague to families in Britain. He interviewed hundreds of distraught parents and made arrangements for their children to live with foster families; he had no further contact with the parents - or the children - once they left the railroad station.
According to a 2001 New York Times article, Winton's parents were born Jewish, but he was baptized in the Church of England and used British church groups to find homes for nearly 650 children from Czechoslovakia - 25 to 30 of the children went to Sweden by air.
The documentary recalls the parents' anguish about sending their children away - aware of the possibility they would never see them again. Survivors share their memories - remembering how their parents' faces looked as they said goodbye and how the children's reactions ranged from sadness and fear to the sense of embarking on a new adventure.
One of the "children" - now grown - displays a suitcase that his parents had packed for him before his departure.
From March 14-Aug. 2, 1939, eight trains transported the primarily Jewish children to a new life. A ninth train with 251 children was scheduled to leave Prague on Sept. 1, 1939, but war broke out and its departure was therefore canceled. According to the film, none of these 251 children - or most of the parents of the 669 saved children - survived the war.
The documentary, narrated by "Winton child" and Canadian CBC correspondent and TV reporter Joe Schlesinger, includes archive footage, photographs, testimony from Winton and interviews with Holocaust experts Simon Wiesenthal and Yehuda Bauer.
While doing research for the film, Minac and his team searched through archives "all over the world," says the Prague-based director, in a telephone interview from a Los Angeles hotel.
In the Washington federal archives, they found footage from 1939 of Nicholas Winton holding a child in his hands as the child's parents were leaving him at the railroad station. "It was this shot that was incredible," Minac says. "(Czechoslovakia) was already occupied by the Germans and (Winton) was rescuing these children behind the Gestapo's backs. And suddenly I see him on screen in action in Prague."
The unedited footage was shot by an American crew visiting Prague, says Minac. "It was very touching." The shots were never edited into a newsreel because then the war started, he added.
The team also found footage shot during the war of a Czech school in Wales. It was used in the film "Children in Exile," and showed children playing and doing schoolwork. "Eighty percent of the students were Winton's children," Minac says. During a screening of the documentary for the "children," many recognized their former classmates.
In the Prague national archives, they found shots of Winton's children arriving at the Liverpool Street station in London," Minac says. "This is all authentic."
When Winton's wife found the scrapbook, her husband told her they should get rid of it, Minac says. However, she instead gave the scrapbook to Elizabeth Maxwell, widow of media magnate Robert Maxwell.
The scrapbook includes lists of the children, including their parents' names and the names and addresses of the families that took them in. After sending letters to each of the addresses, 80 of "Winton's children" were found in Britain, Minac says.
Later that year, Winton and these 80 "children" were invited to attend a filming of "That's Life," a talk show hosted by BBC reporter Esther Rantzen.
"They didn't know what it was about," Minac says. "In front of the camera, these children learned about the scrapbook and that he was the man who rescued them."
About half of the 669 children are now aware of Winton and his rescue, Minac says. They live in several countries throughout the world - from the United States, Canada and Australia to the Czech Republic, Britain and Germany.
Winton's "children," along with their descendants, number about 5,000, Minac says.
He hopes that somehow the remaining "children" will see the films so they can learn about the rescue operation.
At a recent screening in Washington D.C., Minac knew beforehand that one of the attendees was one of "Winton's children." After the film, a second woman stood and revealed that she was also one.
At a screening of "All My Loved Ones" in the Czech Republic, a Christian missionary was surprised to see his name in the list of children's names rolling in the credits at the end of the film. Thomas Gramann contacted Minac, who confirmed that he indeed was on Winton's list. Gramann had known that he was adopted when he was a year old, but it wasn't until he saw the film that he discovered his origin.
Winton has met many of his "children," but Minac says the Englishman, now 92, doesn't like to be praised and is embarrassed by the attention.
"He prefers to talk about gardening," Minac says.
Winton currently runs a nursing home network and is on the board of several charitable organizations for the elderly and for children.
Minac's personal reason for making the two films was an interest and curiosity of Holocaust survivors' stories - his mother was sent to Auschwitz when she was 14.
He was also inspired by Winton's story.
"It shows that in any period of history, and even now, an individual can do something very important and he doesn't need all these organizations. ... He can do it on his own," he says.
"That's why we were so thrilled with the story and we hope that it will be of some sort of inspiration for the audience."
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