What does it mean to grow up in the shadow of an extraordinary father — one whose secret acts of heroism saved 669 mostly Jewish children from the Holocaust, yet never spoke a word of it to his family?

In this episode of TO BE CONTINUED... host Rabbi Jeff Salkin sits down with Nick Winton, son of Sir Nicholas Winton, the quiet, unassuming British stockbroker who, beginning in late 1938, organized the rescue of hundreds of mostly Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Over the course of several months, he arranged eight transports from Prague to Great Britain — until September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, the borders closed, and a ninth train carrying 250 children never left the station.

NOTE: This dialogue did not make it into this episode, but is important to know:

The story remained hidden for 50 years, until Nick's mother discovered a dusty scrapbook in 1988. Nick reflects on learning of his father's legacy as an adult, the weight of carrying such an inheritance, and the question at the heart of this conversation: if second-generation survivor descendants inherit trauma, do children of rescuers inherit moral responsibility?

Nick Winton grew up near Maidenhead, England. He graduated from Imperial College Business School, London. After brain tumor surgery and with a five-year prognosis, Nick earned his MBA. Nick Winton is now an international speaker, storyteller, and company adviser. His stories are inspired by his father. Nick now channels his legacy and personal stories into powerful speeches that inspire change. Learn more at https://nicholaswinton.org/.

TRANSCRIPT:

This episode is generously sponsored by Karen and George Goldberg in honor of their children and three grandchildren who are all descendants of Karen's mom, Ilona Medwied, a Holocaust survivor and the inspiration for this podcast. Also in honor of George's dad, Staff Sergeant Frederick Goldberg of the U.S. Army Air Force, who flew 35 missions as a B-17 side gunner, fighting the Nazis.

We often speak about children of Holocaust survivors inheriting trauma.

As our first guest, Elizabeth Rosner, had put it, "We are experiencing post-traumatic stress as if we too went through those experiences. We know that we didn't. I know that I was not there physically. I wasn't even a witness to their experience.” But in this podcast, we are meeting a different kind of a child, a different kind of second-generation descendant.

This is a story you need to hear.

Welcome to this podcast, To Be Continued... Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors, where we explore the intersections of memory, identity, and resilience. Our goal, to lift up the experiences of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and to ask, How did those memories form you? How did resilience create you as the person you are today? And what is the legacy that you will leave to those who come after you? I'm your host, Rabbi Jeff Salkin.

You are about to meet a man named Nick Winton.

In the Jewish tradition, to bear someone's name is to perpetuate their memory, to make sure that the good deeds that they did will survive them.

Nick Winton bears the name of his father, Sir Nicholas Winton.

It starts in December 1938 with a man named Martin Blake, who was a friend of Nicholas Winton, and who was an instructional master at the Westminster School in London.

Nicholas was about to take a ski vacation to Switzerland, and his friend invited him instead to visit him in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he had traveled in his capacity as an associate of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia.

This committee had been established in October 1938 to provide assistance for refugees created by the German annexation of the Sudeten regions of Czechoslovakia under the terms of the Munich Pact. Convinced that a European war was imminent, Winton decided to go to Prague.

What happened? Winton immediately established a children's section, and using the name of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, initially without authorization, he began taking applications from parents at his hotel in Prague. Soon, thousands of parents lined up outside of Winton's children's sections office, seeking a safe haven for their children.

Ultimately, Nicholas Winton saved the lives of 669 children, most of them Jewish, who have multiplied to more than 6,000 survivor descendants. What a story. And you can watch this story, as I recently did in the movie One Life, that stars Anthony Hopkins, which is a very powerful film.

But there is so much more that you should hear from Nicholas's son, Nick Winton.

And true to this podcast, we will explore the question of, if many second- and third-generation survivor descendants do inherit trauma,

do children of rescuers inherit moral responsibility?

That is our question, among others, for Nick Winton, the son of the man dubbed Britain’s Schindler.

Nick Winton grew up near Maidenhead, England, one of three children born to Sir Nicholas Winton and his wife, Grete.

Nick graduated from Imperial College Business School in London. After brain tumor surgery, and with a five-year prognosis, he earned his MBA.

Nick Winton is now an international speaker, storyteller, and company advisor. His stories are inspired by his father, Sir Nicholas Winton, MBE, a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. And Nick now channels his legacy and personal stories into powerful speeches that inspire change.

Nick Winton, I have to say to you, it is truly an honor to meet you.

Nick, your father's story is extraordinary and his decision in 1938 to act, before World War II, had even begun, well, that decision reflects a moral clarity and foresight that far too few people recognized or possessed at that time.

Please, for all of us, continue the story of your father's rescue of 669 children, starting with what happened after all those parents came to the hotel in Prague, seeking refuge for their children. 

Well, the first challenge he had, Jeff, was to find out whether the country, our country, would accept any children at all. And while he was in Prague, he got in touch with his mum back in London, who he encouraged to go to find out from the British government whether she could actually get any children out of Prague and into London. And there had been some debates, and it was finally agreed that unaccompanied children would be allowed into the United Kingdom under certain circumstances.

So, he started trying to put together a project to make that possible, make that happen. And it was quite daunting because the conditions were quite challenging. I mean, first he needed a foster family that would accept a child and look after them for the duration of what at the time was called the "Emergency,” because we weren't at war. And in fact, the British government didn't think we would ever go to war. So this was considered a sort of a temporary refuge that may never actually be needed.

So having found foster families, he then needed a guarantor of 50 pounds to repatriate them back to their country when the problem had been resolved.

It doesn't sound like a lot in Britain today, but it's equivalent to about $5,000 per child to resettle them after the emergency. So that's quite a substantial commitment to get somebody to make, to get a child into the country.

Then he had to pay for their transport from Prague to London.

They needed a visa from the British home office. And when the Germans finally marched into Czechoslovakia to take management responsibility for it, the government more or less abandoned Czech, he needed an exit permit from the Gestapo. So it was quite a process that he had to go through, the most difficult one being to find families quickly that will be willing to take a child.

I'd like to shift the focus now to your experience.

I'm wondering, why do you think he kept silent for 50 years? Did you experience moments growing up when you sensed that he carried memories or burdens that he did not or couldn't have fully shared?

I'm often asked, and in fact, my father was asked, "Nicky, why did you keep it a secret?" And he said, "I didn't keep it a secret. I just didn't talk about it." And I guess it was emblematic of that generation. Many of them didn't talk about their experiences if it wasn't relevant.

It was a nine-month part-time project for him. It had ended unhappily for him, and he wasn't proud of it. So I guess that was why it was never a topic of conversation in his mind. But it showed up in other ways. For instance, when he was knighted, he didn't tell me about it. I was away at a hotel for the New Year's Eve celebration, and the next morning, the list is published in the New Year's Honors List, and I was just reading the paper, and I scanned it. There was my father's name in the paper, and I couldn't believe it. So I phoned him up, and I said, "But you're in the Honors List?" And he said, "Yeah." "Well, why didn't you tell us?" "Oh," he said, "Well, they asked us if we were offered it, would we accept it? And please don't tell anyone." I said, "Yeah, but that's journalists, so they don't publish the list before it's official, not the family." And he said, "Well."

So he was quite private in many aspects of his life, even with the family. Quite extraordinary man.

Well, especially with a family. So, it's 1988, and you and your sister hear this story for the first time. What was that like for you emotionally?

I mean, he'd done so many things in his life, and this was just another thing. And I sometimes wonder if I'm a bit unimaginative, but does anybody know anybody who would like the scrapbook because we're looking to place it? And what scrapbook? I don't know anything about the Holocaust? No, I didn't know anybody. It was only when the That's Life program broadcasted that exhibit, where half the audience stood up as people he'd rescued, that it actually connected. And even then it took some time for me to process the implications of what I'd just seen. And even now, I'm still getting to grips with this whole aspect of my father's life that was completely hidden until it came out so long ago now. But it still seems to me, quite extraordinary.

Well, that moment, the great reveal, as it were, was a very powerful scene in the movie and must have been even more so in real life. When the world began celebrating your father, did you ever feel that you were sharing him with history? 

It never really occurred to me. I mean, he was still my father. He was still Pa. He was the same man he always was. He always found it extraordinarily embarrassing the way he was so acknowledged, even revered in Czechoslovakia. He was sort of a national hero. He always found it very uncomfortable, I think partly because when the story became public knowledge, he was the only person left alive in that project, in that rescue mission. And although he was the instigator, he certainly wasn't at risk in the way that some of the people in the Prague office were.

So, he felt a little embarrassed that he was getting so much attention because it was, you know, as I say, although he was the instigator, it was a team effort. There were others involved, some in far greater danger than he was.

Yeah, yeah. So, the conditions for getting the children into the United Kingdom were quite challenging, but having got the agreement, he then had to find foster families who would be willing to look after them. And he spent a great deal of time trying to find families, usually by getting articles in newspapers, magazines, trying to encourage people to put their name forward. But then because he was convinced that this was an immediate threat, he did something which today would certainly be illegal as a quick solution. He had cards of children. So if a family says, I'll take a seven year old, he'd have cards of seven year olds and he'd send them off to the families and say, pick one a bit like you might pick a puppy at a kennel.

Because he said, you know, they'd look at the face and say, oh, yes, that's sweet. We'll have that one. And, you know, there was some due diligence on the foster family to make sure that they were acceptable. But then having got a foster family to accept a child, he then put together the program so that they could be released from Czechoslovakia, get the immigration permit, get the paperwork in order, get the exit visa, put them on a train and have them brought over to to Britain.

And over the course of the spring and the summer, he managed to organize eight transports with a total, as you say, of 669 children on it. And he was working on the largest. Up till then, the largest had been in July with 241 children. He was working on the largest, which had scheduled 250 children to bring to Britain to safety. And it was scheduled for the end of August and actually turned out to be the first of September. And the train was more or less ready to go with 250 children, which means 250 foster families, 250 immigration visas, 250 guarantors, which is a million and a half dollars of guarantees, 250 exit permits from the Gestapo. And according to five in the morning, the German army marched into Poland. It was the trigger for the outbreak of the Second World War. The borders to Germany were closed and the train never left the station. And almost all of those 250 children were killed in the Holocaust.

And whenever my father was asked to talk about it, he always reflected on the train that didn't leave, which haunted him. And you can imagine why, Jeff. I mean, he must have thought, if I just worked an hour or two harder that day, if I had not taken one day off to do whatever I needed to do, if that train had left a day or two sooner, all of those children would be alive. And that just stuck with him for the rest of his life. And I think that's another reason why he just didn't want to talk about it, because that failure to him eclipsed the successes.

So if I hear you correctly, he expressed what we might call survivor's guilt?

Not overtly, but I can see why whenever he was interviewed about it, he always, always talked about the train that didn't leave, not the transports that did.

I'm wondering, there's something about your father that was unique. We honor and we remember rescuers like Oscar Schindler and Raul Wallenberg, but your father's story is very different. He wasn't a diplomat. He wasn't a business owner. He wasn't a political leader. He was a quiet, private citizen who organized the rescue of hundreds of children. He didn't just save lives, as we've said. He created generations. And there are children and grandchildren of these children who exist because one man chose to act. How does that make you feel?

As you sort of alluded to, he was a very ordinary man, Jeff. He wasn't anything special. He didn't have any authority or permission or titles or anything. And I was brought up in pretty much that style by an ordinary man who had many different jobs, doing many things with a great interest in what was going on in the world. To me, he was just an ordinary, I only ever had one father and that was him. And he was okay as a father. I sometimes say he didn't beat me. But we had interesting conversations and he brought me up to think for myself. And we would talk about a whole range of topics. I even went back to live with him for the last few years of his life for a variety of reasons. And we were still having really fascinating conversations. He was 104 when I moved in to live with him. And we had still quite difficult conversations in the sense that he didn't let me off by just saying platitudes. He expected me to stand my arguments up and make them fly, which was quite a good upbringing.

Have you met any of the descendants of these families?

Firstly, I met many of the children he saved with him on many of the different trips that he made. And what struck me is how many of them have made major contributions to the communities that they settled in. We've got award-winning war correspondents and award-winning film directors, and leading lights in science and technology. It's just remarkable how much the people who he rescued have contributed and still do, those who are still alive. And I've met some of their children and some of their grandchildren and friends with many of them. And in fact, I'll be meeting a few of them in May in the spring in Czechoslovakia, where we're going to speak at another Congress together. 

I'm wondering, has your father's story shaped your own sense, your worldview about humanity, the meaning of moral responsibility? Can you tell us what that legacy has been like for you?

My upbringing, I guess, I feel it was quite normal because I only have one to judge by. And it involved my own contribution to the community. And that's the way I was brought up, that if you see a problem, you get involved and be a part of it rather than expect somebody else to fix it.

So it's kind of hard to separate. In later life, I'm now on my fifth career. I've decided that my role is to use my father's story to help show people the impact they could be making on the world, as I say, rather than getting somebody else to fix it for them.

And I have some concerns about the way the world is going. And this is a great example to others of how much impact they can make if they choose to act rather than being passive.

At the risk of being overly political, or even political at all, we avoid politics here. What are your general humanitarian concerns about where the world is today?

I'm a fan of democracy. I like the idea that we have a certain amount of freedom to choose how our lives pan out. And democracy is quite a precious and finely balanced organization, which has a number of pillars. And I've seen in Europe a number of those pillars being eroded. And that troubles me. So, for instance, in some countries, we've seen the press being... not dismantled, but weakened... and a growth in, what can I call it, in the sort of social media source of information to people, which has no real bearing on truth. There's no publisher in social media. Everybody is a publisher. So, the idea that we have a press that we can rely on, that tells us what our politicians are saying and will do, is being eroded. In some cases, we've been seeing an erosion of the political system to encourage or allow extreme parties to have some greater say than I feel comfortable with.

And once in power, they've been dismantling some of the checks and balances to make them able to be removed from power. Just recently, we've seen one of the European leaders who've been in power for 16 years losing the election, which is, to me, something of a relief. Because it does seem that he had been organizing the country to make it harder and harder for him to be removed. And I've seen signs that some of the other countries are also been organizing their system to make it harder to have them removed. I'm a fan of democracy, and I feel that it's our duty to be informed so that when we vote, we know what we're voting for. And that's one of the reasons that I like to point out to people how their role in society is to make sure that we are safe. Because there are a lot of state actors who want to see our democracy undermined.

There's also been in Britain and throughout much of Europe a tsunami of Jew hatred, of Holocaust denial, of Holocaust minimization. Have you spoken out? And do you think her voice would actually mean it?

I heard somebody tell me the other day, "Well, you're only one person. What difference are you going to make?" And I thought, "That is so defeatist." If everybody thought, "Oh, I'm only one voice. What's the point?" Nothing would ever happen. And if I only persuade one or two people to be more aware, more alert, more engaged, that's one or two more people than would have done.

And I am concerned about the rise in Antisemitism. It's an age-old ploy, particularly among authoritarian regimes, to find somebody to blame for all the problems that the country suffers from. Because if you've got someone to blame, you can deflect the criticism from yourself. It's all their fault. And we've been seeing that rise in blame culture in so many different countries now. And it's usually a complete crock. It's not true in most cases.

In my country, a lot of our problems are the result of two recent worldwide tragedies. One was the great financial crash of 2007-8, where our government rolled up a huge debt trying to keep businesses afloat. And the second was COVID, where they increased the debt even further to try and keep the country running.

Now, with so little money and such a huge debt, we're looking for people to blame why it's all gone wrong, why we don't have money to spend on ourselves. We don't have to look very far, and it's certainly not because of immigration. And in fact, with our birth rate falling, if we didn't have immigration, our economy would be tanking in about five or ten years' time. So it's kind of a paradoxical situation where people are trying to prevent people coming to our country. And very soon, we're going to be needing more people to keep the economy afloat.

I'm always fascinated by ordinary people who do extraordinary things.

Your father was one of those people, even if he didn't always like talking about it or rarely talked about it.

I'm wondering, what, in your opinion, are things that ordinary people can do to fight back and to resist?

That's a big question, Jeff. I mean, at the smallest scale, we can all make an impact every day when we see somebody who needs help and offer a helping hand in whatever form that means. It might be just smiling at somebody who's a bit depressed. To us, that's nothing. But we have no idea the impact we may have made on the person that we've smiled at. It may be something a bit more. Sometimes we have a bigger challenge put in front of us than other times. My father was just confronted with a bigger challenge than most of us would see and decided that rather than walk away, he needed to do something. So sometimes it's situational. I'm not saying that we should all go out looking for some major catastrophe that we are going to try and change. But there's so much just in our own daily lives where we could make such a difference if we decided that we were going to help rather than just stood back and be passive about it. In fact, my father was quite clear about it. He felt that a letter that I read at some of my talks, he talks about the concept of "active goodness", which is basically he feels that to be a good person, it's not enough to avoid just being a bad person. You actually have to do something. You have to find somebody who needs help and then help them. That makes you a good person. You're not a good person if you just sit on the couch and don't do anything bad. So he was quite clear that we needed to be actively engaged with our communities and help.

It's interesting you say that because in Hebrew we speak of the need to be a Rodef Shalom, someone who "runs after peace", who pursues it, and a Rodef Tzedek, someone who "pursues justice". In other words, you're right. You have to get off the couch and it's really a morally and often physically aerobic experience.

Okay. I like the expression "an aerobic experience." Yes.

And your father was blessed to live to a biblical age, a hundred and six. He was very fortunate.

He had some great advice on how to live longer.

Oh, tell us.

You have to pick your parents wisely.

That's very funny. Well, we'll talk about that in a little while. So you're 73. Your father was 106. You look back on your father. Has his memory been a burden or responsibility? Can you talk about that?

It's a tough act to follow, Jeff. I think most young men would like to do something that makes their father proud. And I'm still working out what that might have been. But I've decided, I talk about my fifth career, I decided that I've been blessed with this family story. And maybe my role, rather than to create a whole new story, is to take that story and use it to influence others to do good work, rather than say, "Well, it's not my story, so I'm going to have to go and find another one." So it's a bit like standing on his shoulders rather than denying that I had that experience. Would I like to have created something memorable myself? Sure. But we are where we are in this pointless wishing that it was something different.

Before we conclude, I want to mention something that many of our listeners may not know, and that we discovered during our research for this episode, and by the way, which did not make it into the movie either.

Sir Nicholas Winton was not born with the name Winton. Rather, he was a Wertheim. In the late 1930s, when Hitler's power was rising and the Munich Agreement took place, the Wertheim family started thinking about the necessity, or the tragic necessity, of changing their surname to something that sounded less German. Which, by the way, just for the record, the British royal family did as well back during World War I. And so from Wertheim, you went to Wertham, and then to a name that you just invented, Winton.

So, Sir Nicholas's parents were born Jewish. You had Jewish grandparents, and they converted to Christianity, and Nicholas was baptized. And I can say that Sir Nicholas was held in great esteem by Yad Vashem, and that the former president of Israel, Ezra Weizmann, sent a letter of thanks to your father after his rescue efforts became publicly known in 1988. So Nick, you're almost kind of mishpasha-- you're almost kind of family to us. I mean, you're part of our moral family, but there's a little Jew in you, isn't there?

I am honored. Thank you, Jeff. I have a great respect for the culture. I, like my father, have absolutely no interest in religion. His view was that the ethics were far more important than the religions, and he thought that the ethics of most religions were pretty similar, but the dogma of religion didn't appeal to him. And it particularly affected him, I think, during the Second World War, when he couldn't understand how both sides could use God to proclaim that they would be victorious. And I feel that the ethics, which is what I've been brought up with, are far more important than the religion.

What you might discover, and I invite you to discover that many of the ethics that you were brought up with actually were produced in their first and maybe even pristine form by the great Jewish sages and teachers of antiquity. Do you mind if I offer you a Jewish teaching that I'd like you to carry with you?

There's a mystical tradition that says that the world is sustained in every generation by 36 righteous people. The Yiddish word for this is the "Lamed Vavniks." Lamed vav is the Hebrew alphabet's equivalent to 36. And they exist in every generation. They are not known to each other. They are not even known to themselves. But because of their secret acts of goodness that are rarely heralded, for their sake, the world continues to exist.

May I offer you something and a suggestion, which is that I occasionally in my life meet someone who would have been a Lamed Vavnik, one of the 36 righteous. And today, I feel that I and all of our listeners have met a man who is the son of one of those 36. I dare say that because of your Father's righteousness, the world, or at least the world of 669 [mostly] Jewish children, continues to exist. You may not consider yourself to be a part of the Jewish people, but I'm going to tell you this right now.

You are a part of Jewish history. And if not, then for your father, a huge chunk of Jewish history and of the Jewish people would have disappeared. And I just want you to know that, please. From my heart to your heart, I want you to know that.

Nick, thank you. Thank you so much for joining me in conversation today. You are really... I'm going to be moved by this for quite some time. I needed to engage in this, in this week of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, because you are a true ally and a friend. And we need you now more than we have needed anyone since, I dare say...1939.

Your father reminds us that history continues not only through those who were saved, but through the children who inherited the responsibility to care. Your father birthed, not only generations of Jewish children, but your father birthed a whole piece of the moral vision of this world.

This episode is a production of the 2G-3G Project produced and edited by Eli Hershko and co-directed by our podcast founder, Sheryl Hoffman. And once again, I'm your host, Rabbi Jeff Salkin.

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Once again, Nick, thank you for being with us. Our blessings, our gratitude to you. And until next month, friends, thank you for your support. And really, thank you so much for listening.