Nicholas Winton

Banker, Humanitarian

United Kingdom

(1909 - 2015)

In 1939, a young London stockbroker, Nicholas Winton, saved the lives of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and brought them across Hitler’s Germany to Britain. For nearly 50 years he kept the whole operation a secret, not even telling his wife about it. Today there are over 5000 descendants called the “Winton children”, including Canadian TV correspondent, Joe Schlesinger, a former UK cabinet minister, Lord Alfred Dubs, and British film director of the Czech origin, Karel Reisz. After the war, he worked in banking in the UK. In 2003 Sir Nicholas Winton was knighted by Queen Elisabeth II. He died in 2015 at the age of 106.