One Life by Barbara Winton. Pegasus Books, Ltd. 2024. 282 pages Hardback $14.95
Barbara Winton is the daughter of Nicholas and Grete Winton. She is devoted to carrying on her father’s legacy. She does this with the writing of “One Life: the True Story of Sir Nicholas Winton and the Prague Kindertransport.
Winton’s story is well-known thanks to a famous 1988 episode of the British TV show That’s Life in which he was unwittingly sitting in an audience surrounded by the children, now adults, he had saved. The author, while offering a brief summary of how he arranged the escape trains, is more focused on “what impelled a twenty-nine-year-old stockbroker” to take on such a monumental task. Tracing Nicholas’s life from his childhood in a well-to-do Jewish family to his student days, his career in finance, and his postretirement charity work. This seems to be a weakness of the book and takes away from the actual rescue.
In 1938 Nick spent 9 months planning how to rescue hundreds of Jewish children from Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia and find them homes in the United Kingdom. Over 6,000 people are alive today because of his efforts. The rescue effort took place just as WW2 was beginning. Most of the 669 Jewish children never saw their parents again.
This incredible story is a reminder to each of us of the difference one life can make. Those working with Childcare may never know the long-term effects their influence has on the lives of others.