In the winter of 1938, Nicholas Winton was a young London stockbroker planning a ski holiday when he learned of refugees crowding into Czechoslovakia after the Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland. Instead of heading for the mountains, he traveled to Prague and found families who understood what was coming even if the rest of Europe still preferred optimism.
Winton and a small circle of allies built rescue lists, found foster homes in Britain, raised money for guarantees required by the government, and negotiated train departures for children who would be traveling without their parents. Eight transports left Prague. A total of 669 mostly Jewish children were brought to safety before war shut the route down.
For decades, Winton said little about it. The public learned the story only in 1988, when his wife found a scrapbook in the attic filled with names and documents. He became famous late, but the real measure of the work was already standing in front of him: the children who had lived, and then the children and grandchildren they eventually had. Rescue, when it succeeds, multiplies long after the rescuer is gone.