A British man’s Holocaust-era heroics will be celebrated tonight at the world premiere of a film about how he saved hundreds of children from the Nazis.
Sir Nicholas Winton, described as the British Schindler, organised the safe passage of 669 children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia to Britain as war broke out in 1939.
A 29-year-old stockbroker from a family of German Jewish background, he was moved to help rescue the children after visiting a refugee camp in 1938, three months after Adolf Hitler annexed the border region of Sudetenland.
His efforts to secure Home Office permits and arrange the eight trains of the Czech Kindertransport have now been marked by Slovak director Matej Minac in a documentary entitled “Nicky’s Family”.
Sir Nicholas, now 101 and living in Maidenhead, will be in Prague tonight to attend the first screening of the film.
In September 2010 a life-size statue of Sir Nicholas was unveiled in Maidenhead, featuring him reading a book containing pictures of the children whose lives he saved.
