Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 28

28 Wednesday 14 November 2001 Evening Standard Features bloody-minded Schindler Continued from previous page tot of relatives that they know existed They found out a whole lot about that time been able to come to me and tell me their story and been kind of a father confessor to them From my point of view now on my own it keeps me very busy which is quite nice But that mean that I should tell you that I like the way it was done nor some of the things that have grown out of it like Holocaust wing that in June he voted Lib Dem was not typical of his class In 1940 after driving Red Cross ambulances he was evacuated from the beaches of Normandy Still in his uniform he decided to look up his old boss at his bank Crews and Co said to him as one does you know are you? How are he said very well today gilt-edged are And I said sorry about He said this ridiculous way handling things never defeat this chap Much better we make the best terms we can straight What did Winton say? can you say? I never went back to the City (Instead he joined the RAF) there was a very strong Right-wing contingent If Hitler had persisted and come over to England tots Winton at Prague Station The Klndertransports left for England from here ooo and tots of people certainly in the City would have welcomed him with open Demobbed in 1946 he worked for the Inter-governmental Committee for Refugees in London and Geneva where he took charge of selling the Nazi booty found in the American zone of Germany Most of the money he raised went to Jewish organisations In 1948 he joined the International Bank in Paris distributing loans to impoverished European countries There he met and married a 29-year-old Danish secretary named Grete Gjelstrup Settling in Berkshire the couple had three children including a syndrome boy who died aged seven Since Grete died of cancer the days seem very tong he says Although a financier by profession Winton has never made much money for himself In the Fifties he went into partnership with the owner of an ice-lolly factory Before retiring in 1967 he looked after an engineering finances His pensions do not go far By renting out part of his home built for Grete in the style of a Scandinavian cabin his income reaches all of £12000 a year His gift continues to be for raising money for others In 1983 he won an MBE for his work with Mencap and the Abbeyfield Housing Association whose old home in Windsor is named Winton House He has just raised the first million for a second home There remains he does not neglect to say a big opportunity for business sponsorship But all the time during this quiet good life a time-bomb ticked in the attic In 1987 when clearing it out his wife found a scrap book detailing remarkable life almost 50 years before She knew nothing about it and Winton to my mind still cannot satisfactorily explain why he had never told hen (He says he did not conceal it consciously) Grete however immediately saw the significance of her find and told him he could not possibly throw the documents away He turned to Betty Maxwell Czech-Jewish herself and a generous benefactress for Jewish organisations She showed the scrapbook to her newspaper tycoon husband Robert who passed it on to the editor of the Sunday People In February 1988 Lost spread appeared Next Esther Rantzen featured the story on Life tricking him into the limelight Live on air it was revealed that he was sitting next to one of the children he had saved The next week he was on again Stand up she said if you owe your life to Nicholas Winton The whole audience rose to its feet His were lost no more far as I am concerned it was all absolutely awful" he grumbles 'I didn't because were children because were niCQ IS objection to Holocaust Memorial Day at first seems pedantic and another chance to snipe at his old bete noire the Home Office which orchestrates it He thinks it should either be called recalling all the last genocides or else Shoah Day although he is wary of the idea of marking endlessly one particular atrocity albeit the worst in history When Vera Gissing paid tribute to him at last televised ceremony he refused to go on stage himself There is it seems something complicated going on here concerning own identity a conflict between the public-school Englishman he was brought up as and his German-Jewish roots On the one hand he was christened and at boarding school in Stowe chose to be confirmed On the other his family changed its name from Wertheim to Winton only in 1938 His feelings are complicated by his atheism and his view that too much conflict is caused by religions dwelling on their differ ences rather than their shared ethics Muriel Emanuel who plots his family tree in the new book writes: time I came to feel that his Jewish ancestry was somewhat of an embarrassment or maybe something hard for him to Could his Jewish blood have been a motive for his rescue operation? 1 think for a psychologist to answer I do it consciously because I had any Jewish blood in me because I never thought about things in that way When I set out to try to bring chil dren in from Czechoslovakia I do it because they were Jewish children I did it because they were Winton is so splendidly unsentimental that I end up craving the corrective of meeting Vera Gissing the rescued chronicler Gissing who lives a few miles away from Nicholas saw her parents for file last time at Prague Station on 30 June 1939 She has not had a particularly easy life even subsequently As she says: up there was very generous with Yet her flukish rescue irradiates her whole personality Her memoirs Pearls of Childhood (Robson Books) brim with the emotion Winton suppresses She assures me caustic persona is a veil and it is true that when she shows me the Life dips I do not see a resentful sourpuss but an elderly gentleman poleaxed by emotion The orphan he was seated next to in the studio was Vera herself They remain the dosest friends and it strikes me it is now Vera who makes it her job to save from the final terrors of old age and widowhood It is a funny thing about his he tells me: practically every one of them does some form of charitable work as if they fed they owe the world something That must please him I say given the similar feelings of debt he has harboured throughout his life He concedes it is at least interesting do it they Jewish I did it they children' FORA LIMITED PERIOD ONLY Book online for your trip to France from Dover to Calais and get a huge 50 off selected phone fares plus free wine phone just bode online now at POSLcom and complete to entitle you to this amazing offer ANOTHER SPECIAL DEAL A WEEKEND AWAY Dover Calais pS(Jbni 'freedonj "Weekender Fare 475 497 6 free Botllca now I realise that while I arrived looking for explanations for his heroism I am now seeking reasons for his reluctance to confront it I conclude that we must remember that he was 79 when Esther pounced He already had his MBE and in his mind it was his continuing work for local charities that defined him Now came this backdated celebrity and with it new responsibilities Suddenly he was a surrogate father to hundreds After a while and with the best will in the world when the orphaned refugees turned up on his doorstep seeking to make sense of their strange childhoods it was hard for him to express sufficient fascination at endless different permutations of the same story mean the positive side is of course that done an awful tot for the children met a tot of people they know found a "Available for travel out on a Friday between 1400 and 23 59 return on a Sunday between 0600 1400 and 1800 2200 Qua only and up to 9 passengers including driver Vdid for bookings made by 20th December and travel must be made by 23rd December 2001 LINE tftee wine is GaUp Chardonnay 2000 75d battle Typical High Street price £499 twine to be collected from Saintfoury'a Wine Store Calais Nicholas Winton and the Rescued Generation £1650 (£995 paperback) is published next week by Vallentine Mitchell IMi offer auhjsct to iranktoJ qxne and Ybu cm book up to 24 houa before tweL "The Off Peak Afternoon Ftoe iDowi you to tone! out alter 1200 (middey) irtuming before 0100 the neat cby The offer may be widakawn wfdmul prior nodee and open to UK leaUeM and new bookingi only on die DowerCakk route Booking mu be completed by MMB and tonad completed by 40102 'Hie fiee wine can arty be aliened from Setafawyli Wine Store hi (bbk during thefr opening hou (doled al dy Sumhy eaoept Mll lM2Att)l ftredom fiuea are only avalbble online and she nri apnaei In the UK itm and oondUona apply One tee product offer per "thick booking only 'v-x 'V1 1 ''VVV jV" "TC i j-.