Prague - Nearly six decades ago a young British stockbroker rescued hundreds of Jewish children from the soon to be occupied Czechoslovakia, thus saving them from a certain death in the Nazi extermination camps.
This week the very same children - now in their seventies - gave him a standing ovation in Prague together with hundreds of Czech kids of school age, bringing the old man to tears.
Sir Nicholas Winton (98), who for years kept quiet about his pre-war heroic act until he broke his silence some twenty years ago, came at the invitation of Prague's Forum 2000 to be applauded and praised once again.
Minister shamed by schoolchildren
"How come he does not have a Nobel Prize yet? Why don't you write to the Swedish king?" a 12-year-old student suggested to the organizers of a school program about Mr. Winton who is sometimes called the Schindler of Britain.
That inspired not only 33 thousand students to sign a letter suggesting Sir Winton's nomination for Nobel Peace Prize, but also the Czech minister of foreign affairs Karel Schwarzenberg to endorse it.
"We should have thought of it long time ago. The children were simply brighter than me," Mr. Schwarzenberg said. The official nomination has already been sent to the Norwegian Nobel Institute. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize laureate will be announced this coming Friday.
Escaping death, giving life
Sir Nicholas (knighted in 2002) came to Czechoslovakia shortly before the World War II and seeing the incompetence of Czechoslovak officials he did not just wait but acted instead.
He managed to get 669 Czech, mainly Jewish, children from the Central European country illegally to the UK, saving them from
the transfer to Nazi concentration camps where 78 000 Czech Jews died. The Winton children now have over 5000 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Nicholas Winton learnt the news about his nomination at this week's gathering held alongside the Forum 2000.
His respond was as humble and modest as his other reactions to glorification his pre-war stunt has been drawing. "I do not think that I have ever done anything which I would deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for. People who get it are of a different sort than me," said Mr. Winton.
Nothing to talk about
His humanitarian action remained unknown for a long time. Even the saved children did not meet their savior until decades after the war.
"I wanted to give him a hug and get to know him," says writer Vera Gissing, one of the rescued Czechoslovak children.
She was looking for her rescuer for many years. It took about half a century and Winton's wife finding his old scrapbook with details about evacuation for the story to be finally revealed.
"I was shocked when I learnt that I have been living ten minutes away by car from Sir Winton all this time," says Vera Gissing.
Many of the children are involved in other solidarity projects, Tomas Grauman, a Christian missionary is one of them. He adopted several children and helped Russian families immigrate to the US.
Film hero
Destinies of Sir Winton and saved children are also told by a Slovak film maker Matej Mináč in his documentary "Nicholas J. Winton -The Power of Good".
It took three years of browsing through archives to find snapshots of Nicholas Winton from 1938 Czechoslovakia.
"I was astonished to find two shots with Sir Winton looking at a little child and smiling. Can you imagine this? This young guy was smuggling children from the protectorate, forging their documents, he was watched by Gestapo. He could have been kidnapped by them any time. And then I found out that there actually is a snapshot with him that was made by Americans who never edited it or broadcast!" says Matej Mináč.
"I do not know what to say. I never thought what I did 70 years ago was going to have such a big impact. And if this story helps people to live for the future then I am very happy that it happened," Sir Winton said in Prague.
