a musical about the saving of 669 lives, world premiere
“Anything that is not actually impossible can be done, if one 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 getting ready to go on holiday in 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 housing people from the occupied borderland literally shocked him. He realised that the refugees, mostly of Jewish origin, were in direct danger of their lives and he decided to act. As 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 colleagues, he gathered the necessary documents from parents who were interested in sending their children to England and processed travel permits from the German occupation authorities. All under the constant watch of the Gestapo.
The first Kindertransport was dispatched from Prague on 14 March 1939 with just twenty children. The last successful Kindertransport was dispatched on 2 August 1939, bringing the total number of children rescued to 669. The very last train with 250 children was dispatched on 1 September 1939, but was stopped and sent back as World War II broke out on the same day.
There are more than 6,000 people in the world today who owe their lives to Nicholas Winton. Nicholas Winton did not regard his act as anything extraordinary and never spoke of it himself. Only by chance did his wife Greta find out about the transports of endangered children from Prague to London in 1988 when she found lists of children and relevant documents in the attic of the house in which the Wintons lived. She passed everything on to the historian Elizabeth Maxwell, and thanks to her, the whole world came to know about it.
We are presenting the musical based on this incredible story of humanity, courage, modesty and love written by Daniel Kyzlink and Luděk Kašparovský, which was created directly for the company at Brno City Theatre, on the stage of our Music Theatre as directed by Petr Gazdík.
