Holocaust rescuer Sir Nicholas Winton followed a simple rule during his remarkable life. He believed that when we see a wrong or when someone needs help, we have an obligation to act.
“He believed that to be a good person, it wasn’t enough to not be a bad person. To be a good person, you have to be active and do something … to be actively good,” his son Nick Winton Jr. said.
On Friday, Sept. 27, the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center in Milwaukee will host Winton, who will share the inspiring, historic story about his father, who saved 669 children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia before World War II began.
The event will be sponsored by the Florence and Laurence Spungen Family Foundation, Becky and Bill Komisar and the Kennedy Barnett Fund.
“The main purpose of the talk is to point out my father was just an ordinary man. He wasn’t anything special,” Winton said. He was “just somebody who felt that there was something that needed to be done, and I feel that that is a really appropriate lesson for us today.”
Winton’s message fits with one of the center’s main tenets, said Samantha Abramson, the center’s executive director.
“Holocaust education is about how everyday people have the power to change the world,” Abramson said. “We are here to take care of each other.”
Winton will share his presentation “If It’s Not Impossible” at Congregation Shalom at 6 p.m. during Shabbat services. A Q&A will follow. The event is free and open to the public.
Winton was born in 1909 in London. He was of German Jewish descent. In 1938 while in Czechoslovakia, the young banker and stockbroker witnessed the threat of Adolf Hitler’s regime, driving him to act and create the Czech Kindertransport to rescue Jewish children from the Nazis before World War II.
“He visited Prague and saw the refugee camps,” he said. “When my father saw these people who were really just like us, he was compelled to act for the children because there were already organizations working to help the adults.”
He acted quickly, sometimes illegally, to get children into homes in Great Britain far away from the dangers of the impending war.
“One of his phrases was, it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” Winton said. “A lot of people won’t do something because they say they don’t think they are allowed to, so they just don’t do anything.”
Winton kept his rescue work under wraps for decades. It was not until 1988, when his wife found a scrapbook he created of children’s names, photographs and documents, that his great deeds came to light. Winton died at age 106 in 2015 after receiving wide acclaim and recognition for his heroism.
“The Holocaust can be studied through a series of choices, choices that politicians made, choices that societies made, and choices that individuals made. Sir Nicholas Winton made an incredible choice,” Abramson said.
The way Nicholas Winton lived his life is extremely relevant now, in a time of extremism and political and social strife, his son said, noting that democracy is fragile.
“My father wasn’t a one-dimensional man who just did one thing of rescuing children. I use his story as the beginning of the conversation to encourage people to be more thoughtful about their role in making our future,” Winton said.
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‘If It’s Not Impossible’
Nick Winton, Jr. (son of Sir Nicholas Winton, Holocaust rescuer), will speak at Congregation Shalom on Friday, Sept. 27 at 6 p.m. during Shabbat services. There will be a Q&A following services during the Oneg. Free and open to the public. Register to attend at HolocaustCenterMilwaukee.org/NickWinton
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