Man Who Saved Over 600 Kids From Nazis Gets a Touching Surprise

Over 50 years after saving 669 kids from Nazi death camps, Sir Nicholas Winton gets a tearful surprise on TV. Everyone in the audience was one of those children he saved, all grown up.


Sir Nicholas George Winton, MBE (born 19 May 1909) is a British humanitarian who organised the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport. Winton found homes for them and arranged for their safe passage to Britain. The UK press has dubbed him the "British Schindler". 

Winton kept his humanitarian exploits under wraps for many years until his wife Grete found a detailed scrapbook in the attic in 1988. The scrapbook contained lists of the children, including their parents' names, and the names and addresses of the families that took them in. After sending letters to these addresses, 80 of "Winton's children" were found in Britain. The world found out about Winton's work 50 years later in 1988 during an episode of the BBC television programme That's Life! when Winton was invited to be an audience member. At one point during the programme Winton's scrapbook was shown, and his achievements explained. The host of the programme, Esther Rantzen, then asked if there was anyone in the audience who owed their lives to Winton, and, if so, to stand – at which point more than two dozen audience members surrounding Winton rose and applauded


In late December of 1938, Winton was about to travel to Switzerland for a skiing holiday when he decided instead to travel to Prague to help a friend who was involved in Jewish refugee work. There he single-handedly established an organization to aid children from Jewish families in Czechoslovakia at risk from the Nazis. He set up an office at a dining room table in his hotel in Wenceslas Square. In November 1938, shortly after Kristallnacht, the House of Commons had approved a measure that would permit the entry of refugees younger than 17 years old into Britain if they had a place to stay and a warranty of £50 was deposited for a return ticket for their eventual return to their country of origin. Winton found homes for 669 children, many of whose parents perished in Auschwitz. Winton's mother also worked with Winton to place the children in homes, and later hostels. Throughout the summer he placed advertisements seeking families to take them in. The last group of 250, which had left Prague on 1 September 1939, was sent back because the Nazis had invaded Poland, marking the start of World War II.

WWII hero Karski to receive U.S. Medal of Freedom

In a White House ceremony next Tuesday, President Obama will bestow the Medal of Freedom posthumously on the late Dr. Jan Karski, Ph.D. America’s highest civilian honor will go to this Polish-born World War II hero whose daring deserves universal acclaim.
 
Speaking April 23 at Washington, D.C.’s Holocaust Memorial Museum, Obama praised Jan Karski, as Obama explained, “a young Polish Catholic who witnessed Jews being put on cattle cars, who saw the killings, and who told the truth, all the way to President Roosevelt himself.”
 
I am fortunate enough to have been among Dr. Karski’s students at Georgetown University. As our second-to-last lecture began in Theory of Communism class, we begged him to tell us about his actions. He was coy, but we insisted.
 
Dr. Karski then kept us spellbound for 90 minutes detailing how he saw the Nazis attack his horse-drawn artillery unit on the morning of September 1, 1939. He fled as the Nazi Blitzkrieg overran the Polish Army. He was captured by the Red Army as the Soviet Union implemented the Hitler-Stalin pact and invaded Poland from the east. 


Jan Karski talked his way out of a troop movement that cost a large contingent of Polish officers their lives at the hands of Russian soldiers in the notorious Katyn Forest Massacre. Having escaped certain execution there, Karski soon jumped from a Nazi train as it sped through the Polish countryside.
 
He fled into the woods, and then nestled into the Polish Underground, which he served as a courier. He carried coded messages from Warsaw across Europe to the Polish exile government, then in still-free France.
 
On one of his missions, the Gestapo captured Jan Karski. German agents tortured him, and Karski feared he would crack. So, he reached into the sole of his shoe, withdrew a small razor blade, and slashed his wrists.
 
The Nazis found him before he bled to death, then took him to a hospital so he could get well enough to be tortured some more.
 
Jan Karski consulted a visiting priest who told a member of the Underground that Witold — Karski’s code name — was in the hospital. Disguised as a nun, another agent came to Karski’s bedside and told him that the guards had been bribed to fall asleep as he leapt from an open window that evening.
 
So, Jan Karski slipped from Nazi custody and returned to the Polish Underground.
 
On his last mission, Karski posed as a Jew. Wearing a yellow Star of David, he witnessed the Warsaw Ghetto’s horrid conditions. Days later, in autumn 1942, he penetrated Izbica, a gateway to the Belzec extermination camp.
 
After witnessing Nazi genocide, Jan Karski prepared to alert the free world.
 
Using a migrant French worker’s papers, he boarded a German passenger train and traversed Nazi-occupied Europe. Jan Karski passed through France, Spain, and on to Gibraltar, where a Royal Air Force plane whisked him to London.
 
That’s when Jan Karski became among the first to reveal the Final Solution.
 
He briefed members of the British War Cabinet. Then, in America, he shared his experiences with Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter — then America’s most powerful Jewish official — and finally, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
 
Unfortunately, these leaders back then found it difficult to believe that Hitler’s hatred was so severe that he was murdering Jews and others by the millions.
 
So, Jan Karski went public with his story.
 
He delivered some 200 lectures, and wrote a best-seller, The Story of a Secret State, in 1944.  He did this not for personal grandeur, but to inform the civilized world about the unbridled barbarism then devouring Europe.
 
Long after Nazi Germany was crushed, Dr. Karski spoke little about his wartime experiences. He quietly studied and taught at Georgetown for the rest of his career.
 
As Americans search for people after whom to pattern our lives, few examples surpass that of Jan Karski.

Mademoiselle

Netanyahu meets 101-year-old Righteous Gentile, Dutch Professor Johan van Hulst

Dutch Professor Johan van Hulst saved hundreds of Jewish children during World War II • Prime minister visits the Netherlands as part of a two-day trip to strengthen bilateral ties.

Shlomo Cesana and Israel Hayom Staff

"It is my hope you will act with wisdom to bring peace to Israel and its surrounding nations," Van Hulst tells Netanyahu.  |  Photo credit: Reuters

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Dutch Righteous Among the Nations Professor Johan van Hulst, aged 101, on Thursday as part of his two-day visit to the Netherlands. The meeting took place after the prime minister's visit to the Dutch House of Representatives where he held a meeting with Chairperson Gerdi Verbeet and with Dutch Senate Chairperson Fred de Graaf.

Born in Amsterdam in 1911, Van Hulst studied psychology and pedagogy at Amsterdam's VU University. During World War II Van Hulst served as principal of the Pedagogical Academy in Amsterdam and was personally involved in saving the lives of hundreds of Jewish children. At that time the Nazi's had separated local Jewish children from their parents, placing them in a creche (child center) before the youngsters were to be transported to concentration camps throughout Europe. With his Academy being adjacent to the facility Van Hulst was able to absorb hundreds of Jewish children, sending them off to various Dutch families for hiding and saving them from almost certain death at the hands of the Nazis.

In light of his unselfish actions, in 1970 Yad Vashem bestowed Van Hulst with a medal and certificate of honor recognizing him as a Righteous Gentile. After the war Van Hulst entered the Dutch political arena where he remained active from 1956 until 1981.

At the meeting Netanyahu presented van Hulst with a copy of the Hebrew Bible, given as a token of appreciation for his efforts to save Jewish lives during World War II. "It is said that whoever saves a single life it as if he saved the whole world, and you saved hundreds. On behalf of the Jewish People and all of humanity, I would like to thank you," said Netanyahu to Van Hulst.

Van Hulst went on to thank the prime minister for the Bible, telling Netanyahu that over the years he has read through the text and is enlightened by it. "I work six days a week and my Sabbath joy is to study the Bible," said the prime minister. Netanyahu went on to mention his father, Benzion Netanyahu, who is also 101 years old.

A seasoned chess champion, Van Hulst also challenged the prime minister to a game of chess adding, "it is my hope that you will act with wisdom so as to bring about peace to Israel and its surrounding nations."

According to the Prime Minister's Office the goal of Netanyahu's visit to the Netherlands is to strengthen ties, advance cooperation and the establishment of an inter-governmental cooperation council. The aim of such a council would be to promote bilateral defense and foreign affairs cooperation and to increase economic collaboration, specifically relating to the private sector, student exchanges, agrotechnology development, research and development, the environment and tourism.

Steven Spielberg was target of Arab League boycott, WikiLeaks cable shows Leaked dispatch reveals diplomats from 14 Arab states voted to ban the director's films in response to his donation to Israel

Steven Spielberg was blacklisted by the Arab League's Central Boycott Office after making a $1m (£570,000) donation to Israel during the 2006 conflict in Lebanon.

A US embassy memo released by WikiLeaks reveals that during a meeting of the group in April 2007, diplomats or representatives from 14 Arab states voted to ban all films and other products related to Spielberg or his Righteous Persons Foundation.

At the confidential US briefing, the head of the Syrian regional office for the boycott of Israel, Muhammad al-Ajami, said that Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen had agreed to ban all Spielberg's works.

Malaysia, Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia were also present at the meeting and voted in favour of the boycott. The memo from the US embassy in Damascus to Washington says that "they and other countries will likely implement their own bans" similar to that adopted by the Arab states.

At the same meeting, cosmetics giant Estée Lauder was added to the blacklist while financial services behemoth Merrill Lynch was placed on a "watchlist".

The only Arab states which did not attend the meeting were those who have signed separate peace accords with Israel, namely, Egypt (which also has a thriving film industry and holds the annual Cairo film festival), Mauritania and Jordan. Djibouti and Somalia were not present at the meeting either.

Marvin Levy, spokesman for Steven Spielberg, said: "While we can't comment on a leaked cable, we know that the films and DVDs have been sold globally in the normal distribution through all this time."

But Chris Doyle at the Council for Arab-British Understanding said the boycott was an "understandable" reaction to Spielberg's donation.

"It would be consistent with other decisions in the past over boycotting both companies and people who have done something equivalent," he said. "The donation would have been seen as hypocritical, given the ethical stance Steven Spielberg has taken on other issues including Darfur, and would have caused a lot of anger.

"The depiction of Arabs in Raiders of the Lost Ark was very poor, cartoon-like and full of the usual stereotypes," he added. "In a broader context, this applies to so many Hollywood films where Arabs for decades have been ludicrously depicted."

The Arab League boycott is a systematic, pro-Palestinian effort by Arab League member states to economically isolate Israel and weaken the country's economic and military strength.

Israeli boycotts by the League are, however, inconsistently enforced across the member states, with individual states often going their own way. Only Lebanon and Syria now adhere to it stringently.

Steven Spielberg set up the Righteous Persons Foundation in 1994. Using his personal profits from the film Schindler's List and, later, Munich, the Foundation is dedicated to helping create a strong Jewish community in the United States.