a musical about the saving of 669 lives, world premiere
“Anything that is not actually impossible can be done, if one really sets one’s mind to do it and is determined that it shall be done.” (Nicholas Winton)
In 1938, Nicholas Winton was a successful young man, not yet thirty years old, working in finance and living a life appropriate to his age. In December of that year, Nicholas was about to go on holiday to the Swiss Alps, but his friend Martin Blake, a member of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, asked him to come and see Prague instead of going skiing.
A visit to a refugee camp for people from the occupied border region literally shocked him. He realised that there was an imminent danger to the lives of these refugees, who were mostly of Jewish origin, and decided to take action. Since the German authorities refused to release entire families, he founded the Children’s Section of the British Committee with the aim of saving at least the children. With the help of his mother and a number of collaborators, he gathered the necessary documents from parents who were interested in sending their children to England and arranged permissions to travel with the German occupation authorities. All this under constant surveillance by the Gestapo.
The first Kindertransport (children’s transport) with just twenty children was dispatched from Prague on 14 March 1939. The last successful children’s transport was dispatched on 2 August 1939, bringing the total number of children saved to 669. The very last train with 250 children was dispatched on 1 September 1939, but was stopped and sent back because World War II had broken out on the same day.
There are tens of thousands of people in the world today who owe their lives to Nicholas Winton. Nicholas Winton did not consider his actions to be anything extraordinary and never spoke about them himself. It was only by chance that in 1988 his wife Greta learned about the transports of endangered children from Prague to London. She happened to find lists of children and corresponding documents in the attic of the house where the Wintons lived. She passed everything on to historian Elizabeth Maxwell, and thanks to her the whole world learned about it.
The musical based on this incredible story of humanity, courage, modesty and love by Daniel Kyzlink and Luděk Kašparovský, which was written especially for the ensemble at Brno City Theatre, is being presented in its world premiere.
