Esther Rantzen cried so hard when British hero was introduced to kids he saved from Nazis

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Dame Esther Rantzen was presenting That's Life to an audience of up to 18 million in 1988. British hero Sir Nicholas Winton was introduced to a few of the children he saved from Nazis

Esther Rantzen cried so hard when British hero was introduced to kids he saved from Nazis

Image: DAILY MIRROR)

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In a television career decades-long, this is the only moment which has broken Dame Esther Rantzen.

It prompted her to cry so hard, she had to step away. Recording had to be paused.

That moment came in 1988, when she was presenting That’s Life to an audience of up to 18 million, during that unforgettable episode in which the story of Sir Nicholas Winton was told for the very first time.

The humanitarian, who afterwards came to be known as the British Schindler, had rescued 669 mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia before the outbreak of WW2, but in the intervening decades had barely told a soul.

It was the moment it was revealed he was unknowingly sitting next to three of those 669, none of which he had met before. And in which they learnt for the first time who was responsible for saving their lives - and got to say thank-you.

It is television gold now to be recreated in a new BBC biopic about Sir Nicholas, in which he will be played by Sir Anthony Hopkins.

“It was the most powerful piece of good news that I have ever seen on television,” Esther, 82, recalls. “Suddenly, someone meets for the first time the man who saved them from the Holocaust, and he realises what in reality, he has achieved. And that actually, he is surrounded by people who owe their lives to him.

The incredible episode aired in 1988

Image:

( Daily Mirror)

“I knew it was going to be extraordinary. What I didn’t anticipate was that I was going to burst into tears.

“Your heart breaks with the sheer inspirational joy of it.”

And as if Britain’s heartstrings could take any more, there later followed an equally devastating episode, in which Sir Nicholas appeared for a second time, only to once more discover he was surrounded by those children he had saved on the so-called Czech Kindertransport. This time, some 30 of them.

“Is there anyone here who owes their life to Nicholas Winton?” Esther asks the audience. “If so, could you stand up please?”

Immediately, the rows around him all silently rise with glowing faces of utter gratitude.

Sir Nicholas glances left and right in shock, then stands and turns in amazement to gaze at the sea of lives he is responsible for.

Seven years after Sir Nicholas' death in 2015 aged 106, Sir Hopkins will emulate that astonishing moment, too, stressing his desire is to inspire similar support for Ukrainian refugees.

And in order to recapture some of that original emotion, the BBC has approached those refugees still alive, or their descendants, to take part.

Around 30 of the people he saved was in the audience

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( DAILY MIRROR)

Until That’s Life covered Sir Nicholas' story, it was so little-known many of the children he rescued did not realise how they had come to travel to the UK.

Esther, who became Sir Nicholas' friend, explains it gave them an increased sense of identity, and how most became good friends with him too, becoming “Winton’s children”, in a sense.

It also changed his life, making him an international figure and symbol of one person’s power to do good.

Perhaps too, it also offered some consolation.

For decades he had rarely spoken about his incredible act of compassion, maybe in part because he felt he had failed. While rescuing 669 children, 250 were unable to flee on the final train because war broke on their departure day.

“The train was stopped, and he believed those children perished,” describes Esther. “I spoke to him before the programme and said how wonderful it was he had saved these Jewish children.

“And he said, ‘It’s not enough’.

“It must have been a real trauma for him.”

Sir Nicholas was a 29-year-old stockbroker working in London when a friend told him of the danger facing Jews in Czechoslovakia in December 1938.

He saved 669 children

Image:

( PA)

He abandoned a skiing holiday to travel to Prague.

It had been flooded with refugees after Germany annexed the Sudetenland, and Sir Nicholas realised noone was helping the children escape.

The Kindertransport had already begun in Germany and Austria; he asked the British government to do the same in Czechoslovakia.

He was told they would if he arranged it. So he and a small team of volunteers including his own mother organised everything.

Many of those children’s parents did not survive.

Sir Nicholas' team kept a scrapbook with the children’s photographs and documents.

It was only when “decluttering” fifty years later, Sir Nicholas and his wife found it.

Realising many of the children might not have access to their own documents, he sought a way to find them, which is how the book made its way to That’s Life.

“His aim was to restore to these children documents, photographs and pictures, it wasn’t to claim any acclaim at all,” Esther recalls.

Although he knew the show was going to try and trace the children, he had no idea they would be there.

It was Esther’s idea.

“He was cross with us because we wouldn’t let him sit next to his wife!”she laughs.

In that first episode, the first refugee he is introduced to is Vera Schaufeld

Image:

( Daily Mirror)

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In that first episode, the first refugee he is introduced to is Vera Schaufeld, sitting on his left. Both her parents were killed in the Holocaust.

The moment of revelation sees her reach for Sir Nicholas' hand and kiss him, as he starts to weep with surprise and emotion.

In the second episode, Lord Alf Dubs, 89, was among the refugees who stood to express their thanks to him.

The Labour peer came to Britain on a Winton train, but similarly, never knew the background until Sir Nicholas appeared on That’s Life.

“It was a very emotional moment, he was the person who had saved our lives,” he says. “Seeing this man who wasn’t imposing, but very powerful, who had done so much for all of us, was wonderful. To meet him and thank him was lovely, a person so significant in our lives.”

Lord Dubs himself campaigns unrelentingly for the rights of child refugees, and became a good friend of Sir Nicholas.

“I think emotionally he encouraged me to know I can make a difference,” he says.

At Sir Nicholas' memorial service, when Esther was asked to speak, she couldn’t resist.

“I said ’’Will you stand up if you owe your life to Nicky Winton?’,” she recalls.

“And some several hundred stood up.”

Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines

It was a miracle to find this man who had saved my life

Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines sat to Nicholas Winton’s right hand side feeling increasingly more unreal as Esther Rantzen explained to a TV audience how this elderly stranger had saved Milena’s life, and those of 669 other children.

The Czechoslovakian refugee knew she had come here by train aged nine in August 1939 to escape the Nazis, but she’d never had any clue how that came about.

Now, in this first now famous That’s Life episode revealing Sir Winton’s story, she was learning it was thanks to the sheer determination and humanity of one Englishman - and that was the man she was now to turn to, to say a heartfelt thank-you.

She was overwhelmed. Clutching the brown cardboard identity label she had travelled with around her neck on that journey to freedom, one of the few items she had left of her past life, she embraced him, feeling his absolute surprise and reciprocated deep emotion.

Now 92, living in Preston, she explains: “This was the first time we were told there was a person behind our escape.

Nicholas Winton with Lady Milena Grenfell Baines

Image:

( Daily Mirror)

“I had never questioned how I got on that train. It was surreal, Esther explaining what had happened, overwhelming.

“It felt unreal in a sense, to find you are sitting next to someone who saved your life.”

Having married and had two children, two step-children, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, she felt keenly they all owed their lives to him. Sir Winton became a great family friend.

“It was a miracle to find this man, and he became a part of my life, and my children’s lives. It brought everything back and I began connecting not only with him, but my whole past. It’s when I began visiting my home country again,” she says.

Milena escaped on Sir Winton’s final train with her three-year-old sister.

Her father was a well-known social democrat and had supported the anti-Nazi author Thomas Mann, which put the Jewish family at particular risk.

Her identity label from the train journey in Aug 1939

Image:

( DAILY MIRROR)

Thankfully, her father also escaped to Britain, and her mother the following year.

Her grandparents and cousins - her age - were all killed in concentration camps.

“Without Nicholas I would have followed my cousins, two years later they were murdered, we would not have survived,” Milena says.

She recalls she and her sister did not cry on the train - and was later told all the children held hands and sang ‘we are not going to cry’.

In her backpack, was an autograph book she treasures to this day. Her grandfather, Emil Kosiner, had given it to her, and relatives had written in it, before she left.

He wrote: “Remember to stay a faithful daughter to the country you are leaving, your parents, and your grandfather who loves you very much.”

She never saw him again.

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