British "Schindler" reunited with children he saved (News Feature)

By Anna Tomforde Sep 4, 2009, 13:48 GMT

London - As the steam-powered 'Winton Train' pulled into platform 10 of London's Liverpool Street Station and a 1930s band struck up, tears of emotion were shed.

But they were soon replaced by smiles, hugs and kisses for Nicholas Winton, the British 'Schindler' whose 1939 Kindertransport from Prague to London saved hundreds of Jewish children from the death camps.

   Now aged 100, Winton was Friday reunited on the platform with 22 of the children he rescued, as well as children and grandchildren who accompanied them on the four-day journey from Prague, re-created to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of war.

   'It is wonderful to see you all,' said Winton, remarkably sprightly for his 100 years. 'It's wonderful that it worked out so well because after all, history could have made it very different.'

'Don't leave it quite so long until we meet again,' he added, displaying the whit and spirit that, as a 30-year-old, moved him to organize the evacuation of 669 children from Prague on eight journeys in 1939.

   The symbolic anniversary trip, organizers said, was also to remember the thousands of children who could not depart on future trains once the war had begun.

'Thank you so much, I wouldn't be here,' said Brenda Lewis from Toronto as she knelt down before the white-haired Winton, who was sitting in an armchair especially positioned on the platform.

Winton, whom they all know as 'Nicky,' had saved her father, Henry Lewis - (previously Heinz Laufer) - from the death camps. He married in England and emigrated to Canada in the 1950s, where he died 18 months ago.

Clutching a bunch of flowers she was given on her 85th birthday she marked on the train this week, Sue Eldridge from Ottawa said the symbolic journey meant closure for her.

   'The circle has been completed,' she said. Eldridge was 14 when she was put on the Kindertransport. 'The worst thing was leaving and the second-worse was not to know the family you were going to.'

   But she had been 'very lucky,' treated well and sent to boarding school by her foster parents in England. She never saw her own family again. 'All my family were killed. Put on a train, and I don't know what happened,' added Eldridge.

'Thank you so much, thank you for our lives,' said another survivor. Otto Deutsch, 81, who was not on Friday's train but attended the ceremony, clutching his first British registration card, recalled the moment he left his family behind on the platform in Prague.

   'I never saw my parents or sister again. I remember my sister running after the train. She shouted 'Be a good boy. We will see you shortly'.'

   Winton, with typical modesty, acknowledged that it had been 'quite difficult' to get the children together with their foster families. 'Especially, as every child had to be signed for,' he added.

   'This is much harder work than it was 70 years ago,' he joked.

   In 1938, the former stockbroker in the City of London skipped a planned skiing holiday in Switzerland to visit friends in Prague, realizing the danger of the imminent Nazi invasion.

   There and then, he set upon organizing Operation Kindertransport which ran between March and September, 1939.

But Winton never told anyone - not even his family - about his deed for the next 50 years. It was only when his wife, Greta, cleared the attic of their home in 1988 that documents relating to the rail transports came to light.

'People don't talk about what they did in the war,' he once said. His grandson, 21-year-old Laurence Watson, Friday called him simply a 'hero, inspired by goodness.'