One Life
A must-see movie most relevant to the present. The true story about Nicholas Winton who saved 669 children in Czechoslovakia from Nazi extermination camps in 1938.
You might expect the blanks to cover the words “Ukraine”, “Russians”, “Russia”, and “Vladimir Putin, some date” in this order, or at least you would if “I have reunited what had to be reunited” were replaced by “I will reunite what has to be reunited”.
*
*
*
*
[Some blank lines so you can ponder for a moment what the full quote might be.]
*
*
*
*
*
This is the full quote:
Exactly five months later, on 1 September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, starting World War II.
Munich Agreement
When Austria-Hungary was dismembered after World War I, some ethnic Germans found themselves living in the new country of Czechoslovakia, the part of it that came to be called the Sudetenland, after the Sudeten Mountains. On 29/30 September 1938, an agreement providing for the German annexation of the Sudetenland was concluded at Munich by Nazi Germany, Great Britain, the French Republic, and Fascist Italy. The Czechoslovak government, which was neither invited nor consulted, agreed to abide by it.
On 26 September Hitler had given a speech in Berlin in which he declared that the Sudetenland was “the last territorial demand I have to make in Europe.” He also stated emphatically that he had assured Neville Chamberlain (who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940) that “once this issue has been resolved, there will no longer be any further territorial problems for Germany in Europe.” The Munich Agreement has become a byword for the futility of appeasing expansionist totalitarian states.
Contemporary resonance
Speaking at the presentation of a new biography (in German) of Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill on 11 April 2024, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius warned that “Putin will not stop once the war against Ukraine is over.” He said Putin had expressed this intent “just as clearly as Hitler, who also always said that he would not stop.” [In his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf and on countless subsequent occasions, Hitler declared Germany’s need to acquire more Lebensraum (living space) for its people, the chief source of which would be the fertile lands to the east of Germany.] Pistorius urged Europe to prepare for the possibility of a large-scale Russian attack, stating: “We have to decide now whether we want to prepare for a genuine threat from Putin to materialize or whether we want to make it easy for him.”
Astute observation by Allen (@SquireDigital) on Apr 9, 2024: “just as Czechoslovakia was no longer defensible without the Sudetenland, Europe will not hold without Ukraine.” [The loss of the Sudetenland was detrimental to the defense of Czechoslovakia, as the extensive Czechoslovak border fortifications were located in the same area.]
Kindertransport
The Kindertransport (“children's transport”) was an organized effort to rescue children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of World War II. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often, they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust that was to come. The program was supported, publicized, and encouraged by the British government, which waived the visa immigration requirements that the British Jewish community was not able to fulfil.
Nicholas Winton
Born to German-Jewish parents who had immigrated to Britain at the beginning of the 20th century, Nicholas “Nicky” Winton, a young London stockbroker, assisted in the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II. On a brief visit to Prague in December 1938, he found families who had fled the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Austria, living in desperate conditions with little or no shelter and food, and under threat of Nazi invasion. He spent the next months mobilizing one of the most audacious mass evacuations ever seen. Returning to Britain, he worked to fulfill the legal requirements of bringing the children to Britain and finding homes and sponsors for them.
For the next half-century, Winton never spoke about the operation. His role in it only came to public awareness when his wife discovered a scrapbook in their attic detailing all of the children and their families he helped save. Haunted by the fate of the children he wasn't able to bring to safety in England and at first unwilling to make this emotional burden public knowledge, he eventually agreed to hand over his scrapbook to a historian, who happened to be the wife of the Czechoslovak-born British media tycoon Robert Maxwell. This is how the information contained in the scrapbook went to the popular BBC television program “That’s Life!,” where Winton was introduced to one of the children he had rescued. This led to a follow-up show where a large part of the audience was made up of other “Nicky's children” who had subsequently contacted the editors of the show. Following the broadcasts, hundreds of them made contact with him and he remained close to them for the rest of his life.
The Wintons donated the scrapbook to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. In 2003, Winton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for “services to humanity, in saving Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.” In 2014, he was awarded the highest honor of the Czech Republic, the Order of the White Lion (1st class), by Czech President Miloš Zeman. Winton died in 2015, aged 106.
The movie
The movie’s subtitle “Save one life, save the world” is a compact version of a Jewish teaching that originates from the Talmud. The original text reads: "It was for this reason that man was first created as one person [Adam], to teach you that anyone who destroys a life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed an entire world; and anyone who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world.”
The film alternates between following Anthony Hopkins as a 79-year old Winton reminiscing on his past, and Johnny Flynn as a 29-year old Winton attempting to rescue (mostly Jewish) children form German-occupied Czechoslovakia. It was released in the UK on 1 January 2024. Directed by James Hawes, it is based on the book If It's Not Impossible...: The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton (Troubador Publishing Ltd, 2014) by Barbara Winton, the daughter of Sir Nicholas Winton. The movie received the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2024 Palm Springs International Film Festival, the Cinema for Peace Award for The Most Valuable Film of the Year, and the British Film Designers Guild Award for Best Production Design (Feature Film, Period).
If you get the chance, please do yourself the favor of watching this heartbreaking, deeply moving, and most inspiring film. It contains the following dialogue:
Mrs Maxwell: Mr Winton, around 15,000 children went into concentration camps in Czechoslovakia and, uh, less than 200 of them survived, and you saved 669.
Mr Winton: Oh.
