In 1939 a London stockbroker named Nicholas Winton worked his day job and then spent his evenings arranging permits, foster homes, and money so that eight trains could carry 669 children, most of them Jewish, out of Prague to safety in Britain before the war closed the borders. He hardly ever talked about it, and for nearly 50 years the story sat in a scrapbook his wife found in their attic. In 1988 the BBC show That’s Life! invited him into its studio audience, and on a later show the host asked, “Does anyone here tonight owe their life to Nicholas Winton?” More than two dozen grown men and women sitting all around him stood up to thank the humble man who had saved them.
