An Army of Normal Folks - Nicholas Winton: He Rescued 669 Children

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

For our series "An Army of Normal Dead Folks", Larry Reed tells the story of his friend Nicholas Winton, who rescued 669 mostly Jewish children who were at risk of being killed by Nazi Germany. Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The first time in a national broadcast that his story became known again around Britain, they called him to the studio, put him in the front row, told him they were going to tell his story for the first time in 50 years, didn't tell him who else was in the audience. But the hostess of the TV program shows some of the paraphernalia from that time, shows the list of children's names that was found in his attic, tells the story, and then she says, if by chance there might be someone in this audience today who owes their life to Nicholas Winton, please stand. Well, they had looked up those names, tried to find as many of the children now in their 50s and 60s as they could. And that's who comprised

the audience. And with Nicky seated in the front row, everybody stands. Welcome to an Army of Normal Folks. I'm Bill Portney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm an entrepreneur. And I've been a football coach in inner city Memphis. And the last part somehow led to an Oscar for the film about our team. It's called Undefeated. Y'all, I believe our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits talking big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks.

Guys, that's us. Just you and me deciding, hey, you know what? Maybe I can help. And that's exactly what Nicholas Winton did. Winton saved the lives of hundreds of children from the Nazis. And today, along with Larry Reed, the author of Real Heroes,

we pay tribute to him as part of our special series, An Army of Normal Dead Folks. I cannot wait for you to meet Nicholas Winton right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Experiencing the news each day can feel like a journey. With Up First from NPR though, it doesn't have to be. Welcome to 15 easy minutes of breaking news, clarity on international and national affairs, and a casual tone that you can take in with breakfast.

Begin your day informed, ready and refreshed. Begin your day with Up First. Subscribe to Up First from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. life. How serious is youth vaping? Irreversible lung damage serious, 1 in 10 kids vape serious, which warrants a serious conversation from a serious parental figure like yourself. Not the seriously know-it-all sports dad, or the seriously smart podcaster. It requires a serious conversation that is best had by you. No, seriously, the best person to talk to your child is best had by you. No, seriously. The best person to talk to your child about vaping is you.

To start the conversation, visit TalkAboutVaping.org, brought to you by the American Lung Association and the Ad Council. What if you ask two different people the same set of questions? Even if the questions are the same, our experiences can lead us to drastically different answers. I'm Minnie Driver Driver and I set out to explore this idea in my podcast, Minnie Questions. Over the years we've had some incredible guests. People like Courtney Cox, star of the infinitely beloved sitcom Friends, EGOT winner

Viola Davis and former Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair. And now, Mini Questions is returning for another season. We've asked an entirely new set of guests our seven questions, including Jane Lynch, Delaney Rowe, and Cord Jefferson. Each episode is a new person's story with new lessons, new memories, and new connections to show us how we're both similar and unique. Listen to mini questions on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 7 Questions, Limitless Answers.

Hey everyone, it's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the home stretch and I'm exhausted. But turns out the end is near, right in time for a new season of my podcast, Next Question. This podcast is for people like me who need a little perspective and insight. I'm bringing in some FOKs, friends of Katie's, to help me out like Ezra Klein, Van Jones, Jen Psaki, Ested Herndon.

But we're also gonna have some fun, even though these days fun and politics seems like an oxymoron. But we'll do that thanks to some of my friends like Samantha Bee, Roy Wood Jr. and Charlemagne the God. We're gonna take some viewer questions as well. I mean, isn't that what democracy is all about? Power to the podcast for the people.

So whether you're obsessed with the news or just trying to figure out what's going on, this season of Next Question is for you. Check out our new season of Next Question with me, Katie Couric, on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, here is maybe I'm not going to say my favorite of the group, but chapter 25 is Nicholas Winton, the humblest hero. And I absolutely love his story story and here's one I'd never heard the name mentioned before. Tell us the story of our humblest hero Nicholas Winton. This is one Bill that I can tell from some personal experience. Really? Because he is one of the few people in my book that I actually came to know myself.

Really? I visited him a half dozen times in London. Oh, that's fabulous. He's the oldest man that I ever came to know. He passed away in 2015 at the age of 106. Holy smokes! And two months. I didn't know that part either.

Oh, there was a documentary done about him called The Power of Good. You can see it in excerpts on YouTube. Way back in the early 2000s, I had not heard his story before I saw that documentary. Honestly, his story was Schindler's List-ish. It's similar. It is. Different, but similar. It is. Different, but similar. But tell us a story, because it is an absolute unbelievable story of compassion and care and risk and humility.

And if you think about the generation after generation of what he did. I mean, untold numbers of lives today are on earth because of him. Yeah, more than 6,000 as a matter of fact. Phenomenal. Well, Nicky Winton, he went by most of the time, was a 29-year-old stockbroker in 1938. And remember, that was the last full year of peace before the outbreak of the Second World War. And Nicky was a very successful stockbroker. He was on his way to becoming a wealthy man. And he had planned a trip to Switzerland for Christmas time 1938. This was just two months or three months after the Munich agreement where Britain and France said to Hitler, okay, if you just take the Sudetenland, the fringe area of Czechoslovakia and don't move any further, we won't go to war. This is basically Neville Chamberlain trying to pacify Hitler by allowing Hitler to possess land that she shouldn't be possessing and thinking, okay, well, that'll be enough.

That's right. Neville Chamberlain never understood that Hitler was just wetting his beak. Yeah, that was called appeasement, even at that time by Chamberlain's foes. And it was appeasement. You know, interestingly, I can't help but wonder if we're dealing with the same thing today with Putin in Ukraine. Yeah, you can make a good argument for that. What a tragic situation. I mean for our listeners to get a similar feel, you know, Putin has invaded Ukraine and taken certain parts of it. And while the Western world has armed Ukraine to defend itself, it certainly hasn't come to Ukraine's rescue. And I think the vast majority of us think of it as an international irritant that we

just wish was over. And if we could come up with some way to get Putin to just take what he wants and back off and everybody quit fighting, it'll be just fine. That is exactly what people thought of Hitler back in this time. And the appeasement, in this case, if we said, sure, Putin, keep Crimea and the little bit of land you got from Ukraine, and can we just all call it nice? While that sounds good, that's exactly what Chamberlain's approach to Hitler was with Czechoslovakia. Give him this little bit of Czechoslovakia, he'll back off and that'll be the end of it.

Yeah. Yeah. Just a few weeks back in October, I visited the three Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Beautiful, by the way. Oh yeah. I love it there. I do too. Yeah, wonderful people. Did you go to Tallinn? Yes, I did.

Phenomenal. Did you go to old school Tallinn? Yes, I did. The old city Tallinn with the cobblestones? I did and then Porvoo up over near Helsinki. Stunning and the history there is phenomenal. Oh, yeah, the ferry ride from Tallinn to Helsinki, Finland was incredible too. It is incredible. I've done that. Oh, fantastic. For business, actually. I do business over there. Okay. So anyway, I digress.

You go ahead. And a few months, excuse me, before that, in May, I was in Moldova, former Soviet satellite. And I can tell you that people in all those countries strongly believe that if Putin gets away with what he's doing in Ukraine, that they'll be next. They don't think that he wants just Ukraine or a portion of it. They think, no, this is a guy who will move on whatever he thinks he can take. So let's go back to 1939. It was really the same thing. The only difference was it was Hitler with Czechoslovakia.

And because nobody wanted to waste lives and riches and money on defending any of it, it was, let's appease Hitler. Let's give him this little peace, and then he'll stop. And that was the hope. That's right, and after that Munich conference that gave him the Sudetenland, lots of people in Europe breathed a sigh of relief. They thought, oh, we've dodged a bullet.

Everything's okay now. Yeah, no war. Little did they know. That's right. Niki Winton knew otherwise. But nonetheless, he was going to Switzerland for Christmas vacation when a friend of his who worked in the British embassy in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, contacted him and said, Nicky, don't go to Switzerland. Come here. There's something you have to see and I will take you around." Well, and this is depicted in the recent movie made about

Nicky Winton, in which Anthony Hopkins plays the lead role. Nicky agrees and he goes to Prague, and what his friend wants him to see are the refugee camps at the onset of winter in and around Prague, full of thousands of Jewish families who had escaped from the Sudetenland, some from Germany itself, also from Poland. They had no place to go. The world said, we don't have any problem, we signed an agreement. You're not in any danger. But they knew otherwise. They knew that Hitler was on the move and that would only be a matter of time before they took the rest of Czechoslovakia and they would be in danger again. So, Nikki toured these camps and, lo and behold, mothers and fathers would come up to him. He was a perfect stranger. They would come

up to him and beg him to take their children to safety, saying, we can't get out. No government will let us come in. But can you perhaps do something to take our children to safety? Nikki could have said, well, I'm only one person. Can you imagine the gut wrenching decision and the desperation you must have as a parent to offer your child to a stranger? Perfect stranger. Yeah. How desperate must it have really been to walk up to a stranger and offer up your child in hopes of saving their life because you know the impending doom that's about to fall upon you? It's just unfathomable.

It's hard to comprehend. But it's important for us to think that way through to understand the context of what this was. Yep. Well, immediately, Nikki sent letters and telegrams to governments all over the world asking, if I can get at least the children out, will you allow them into your country? Guess how many countries responded in the affirmative? I would say I don't. I read it, and I remember it's very few. Very few, including the United States said heck no Yeah, you got a letter from the White House saying sorry nothing we can do only two countries his own Britain and Sweden said yes

We will let them come But Britain his own Britain did put conditions on it They said well We think this is just gonna blow over and they're gonna have to go back and we don't we don't want to get stuck with The cost of that so you have to go back and we don't want to get stuck with the cost of that. So you have to put on deposit with a home office the equivalent in today's money of about $3,000 per child. And you have to find foster families who agree to take them in.

Well, when Nikki knew the clock was ticking, he had to act fast because he thought it was only a matter of time before war would break out. In the end, over the first eight months of 1939, he organized nine rail transports of children and did all the documentation, found the foster families willing to take them in back in Britain, did all that legal work, raised the money to get them out. Even as Prague was occupied by the Germans in March of 1939, he's still working to get the kids out under the noses of the Nazi officials. The first eight of those transports contained 669 children. Some were as young as one year old.

Going to the UK and Sweden. Yeah, a few to Sweden. Overwhelmingly, they went to foster families in Great Britain. How in the world do you round up 700 families in such short period of time that says, I will take children I've never seen before? Unbelievable. That in and of itself. I mean, I can't even imagine getting the trains put together and probably a bunch of fake documents and working under you know the kind of this cloak and dagger under the radar thing I mean in some respects he's a British Harry Tubman and said it wasn't an underground railroad

it was actually a railroad but the point is all of that but to find that many families to say yes to he had to have been a man possessed. Oh, he was. He took pictures of all the children and used the pictures to help encourage foster families. So they could look at pictures and say, well, I'll take a child of say four and I'd rather it be a boy, and if I can look at a picture, I'm more likely to say I'll take that one. So he had to do that. He had a ninth transport organized. It was to be the largest of all the ones that he arranged. It had 250 children. This is in addition to the 669 who had first gotten out. The ninth transport had 250 ready

to go foster families awaiting them in Britain on the 1st of September 1939, the day the Second World War broke out. The Nazis stopped all rail transports, took those kids off the train. Not a single one of those 250 children survived. That explains, and I can tell you from knowing him personally, why he couldn't talk about this for 50 years. The story kind of died out. So it wasn't about the 11 trains that he saved, it was about the 12th that he lost. That's right. It was the 250 he knew were ready to go and did not survive. For 50 years, the children who were saved

grew up in these foster homes. And the story had kind of died out and wasn't widely known how they got there, who was responsible for it. Until in 1988, his wife, he didn't even tell her this. He met her after the war. Soon as the war broke out, he joined the RAF and fought in the Air Force for six years,

then met the woman who became his wife, never even told her what he had done. But in 1988, she was going through the attic and found a box full of pictures of children, visa materials, documentation, a list of names, and went to him and said, Nikki, what's this? Well, that's when he told her the story. The story got out, verified. Queen Elizabeth knighted him, so he was Sir Nicholas Winton. And you've got to see this bill on YouTube if you type in his name, Nicholas Winton, you will find a clip of the first time in a national broadcast that his story became known again around Britain. They called him to the studio, put him in the front row, told him they were going to

tell his story for the first time in 50 years, didn't tell him who else was in the audience. But the hostess of the TV program shows some of the paraphernalia from that time, shows the list of children's names that was found in his attic, tells the story, and then she says, if by chance there might be someone in this audience today who owes their life to Nicholas Winton, please stand. Well, they had looked up those names, trying to find as many of the children now in their 50s and 60s as they could, and that's who comprised the audience. And with Nicky seated in the front row, everybody stands. And that was his first renewal of the connection with those kids. They were able to thank him in person.

And now we know that the numbers of people who survived, who lived because of Nicky Winton, that is the 669 that he saved, some of them. And now their descendants. Their children and grandchildren. It's approaching 7,000 people who owe their existence to this one man who could have walked away but said, I'm going to do everything I can. Who could have walked away like everyone else before him had all the way up to the Prime Minister of the UK.

Exactly right. Exactly right. Exactly right. What an extraordinary man. Every time I visited Nicky in his later years, in his 90s and after he turned 100, I would take groups of students from America and have them watch the documentary about him beforehand. And anytime one of the students in his presence would say something like, oh, Sir Nicholas, you're such a hero, he would immediately say, oh, oh, Sir Nicholas, you're such a hero. He would immediately say, oh, no, no, no, don't call me that.

I just did what I could. I mean, what a humble man. And this underscores the fact that what he did that's saved so many lives, he did not for fame, not for fortune. He could have written a book about it, probably a best seller, you know, 50 years before the story became known. What he did, he did quietly and he did because of the good that it represented, because it helped and saved those children. Not for fame, not for fortune, not for himself, but to save lives.

Nicholas Winton, the humblest hero. Um, remarkable, isn't it? Remarkable. And thank you for joining us on this special series of our ridiculously titled, An Army of Normal Dead Folks. You have a genius producer. It's ridiculous. But if Nicholas Winton or other episodes

have inspired you in general, or better yet, to take action by acting heroically in our time, buying Larry Reed's book, Real Heroes, where the story came from, and I'm telling you guys, buy the book and read it, it's well worth it. Or if you have story ideas for the series, please let me know. I'd love to hear about it. We'd love to keep this ridiculously titled series going. But we need historians to tell us about Army of Normal Dead Folks and we'll do the research and highlight them.

We think it's interesting stuff. So if you do that, write me anytime at Bill at normal folks dot us and I promise you I will respond and Alex will probably do the work and we'll end up doing a show. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with friends and on social, subscribe to the podcast rate and review it. Join our army at normalfolks.us. Consider becoming a premium member there. Any and all of these things that will help us grow. An army of normal folks. Thanks to our producer, Ironlight Labs. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you next time. top. Experiencing the news each day can feel like a journey. With Up First from NPR though, it doesn't have to be. Welcome to 15 easy minutes of breaking news, clarity on international and

national affairs, and a casual tone that you can take in with breakfast. Begin your day informed, ready and refreshed. Begin your day with Up First. Subscribe to Up First from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. How serious is youth vaping? Irreversible lung damage serious, 1 in 10 kids vape serious, which warrants a serious conversation from a serious parental figure like yourself. Not the seriously know-it-all sports dad, or the seriously smart podcaster. It requires a serious conversation that is best had by you.

No, seriously, the best person to talk to your child about vaping is you. To start the conversation, visit TalkAboutVaping.org, brought to you by the American Lung Association and the Ad Council. What if you ask two different people the same set of questions? Even if the questions are the same, our experiences can lead us to drastically different answers. I'm Minnie Driver, and I set out to explore this idea in my podcast and now Minnie Questions is returning for another season. We've asked an entirely new set of guests our seven questions including Jane Lynch, Delaney Rowe and Cord Jefferson. Listen to Minnie Questions on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Seven questions, limitless answers.

Hey everyone, it's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the home stretch, right in time for a new season of my podcast, Next Question. I'm bringing in some FOKs, friends of Katie's, to help me out, like Ezra Klein, Jen Psaki, Astead Herndon. But we're also gonna have some fun thanks to some of my friends like Samantha Bee and Charlemagne the God. We're gonna take some viewer questions as well. I mean isn't that what democracy is all about? Check out our new season of

Next Question with me Katie Couric on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.