Prague to host shrine recognising agonising choice of those who put their youngsters on ‘kindertransport’ trains organised by Nicholas Winton

Their 11th-hour escape on the eve of the second world war became the stuff of legend, earning international recognition for the man who organised it, Sir Nicholas Winton.

Now people spirited out of German-occupied Czechoslovakia when they were children are to pay homage to previously unsung heroes in the affair – the parents who boarded them on to Winton’s “kindertransport” trains bound for Britain in a desperate attempt to save them from the Nazis.

A memorial recognising the agonising moral choice made by parents of the 669 mostly Jewish children sent away is to be constructed in Prague’s main railway station, from where eight evacuation trains departed in the spring and summer of 1939, after Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.



It will stand near a statue of Winton, the British aid worker and former stockbroker who organised the transports and has been labelled “the British Schindler” for his role in rescuing Jews, a comparison to Oskar Schindler, the Nazi industrialist credited with saving 1,200 Jewish prisoners from Hitler’s death camps.





Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nicholas Winton with one of the children he rescued. Photograph: PA

To be known as the Valediction memorial, the shrine will comprise a replica of the door of one of the original train wagons in a design meant to evoke the traumatic parting between parents and children on the station platform.

The door will be filled with glass engraved on each side with patterns of adult and child hands to represent heartrending scenes that were repeated many times at the point of departure.



Zuzana Marešová , 85, who left Prague at seven with her two older sisters in July 1939, said the survivors of the child transports had conceived the memorial as a final act of gratitude to their parents, having already paid generous tribute to Winton – who died aged 106 in 2015, a year after receiving the Czech Republic’s highest honour for his rescue missions.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Zuzana Marešová saud: ‘All of the parents were crying and waving. I can still see them today.’ Photograph: -

“Can you imagine putting your children on a train, saying goodbye to them, knowing you might never see them again? We had the opportunity to thank Nicky [Winton] personally, but never to thank our parents,” she said.



“One of my most vivid memories of the parting was standing inside the train and looking out of window at the parents on the platform,” recalled Marešová , 85, now living in Prague and one of the few evacuees to later be reunited with her parents.

“All of the parents were crying and waving. I can still see them today. I can remember the parents’ hands up and our noses pressed to the glass and that gave me the idea of the parting. The most frequently uttered sentence along the platform was, ‘See you soon’.”

Most of the parents died in the Holocaust, without seeing their children again.

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The children were taken by train to the Hook of Holland, from where they sailed to Britain. Most had little idea of the grave circumstances in which they had been sent away, Marešová said, regarding the episode as an adventure. Only when the train entered Germany, and aggressive soldiers came on board with dogs and emptied their luggage on to the floor, did their understanding change.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Zuzana Maresova as a child.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Artist’s impressions of the Winton memorial.

About half the estimated 3.2m Czech koruna (£103,000) cost of the memorial and its future upkeep has already been raised – with a campaign under way to raise the rest, including in Britain, where it is being led by Lady Grenfell-Baines, another survivor of the transports. Fundraising appeals have been posted on Prague’s public transport network. Organisers hope to unveil the shrine in the next few months.

‘British Schindler’ Nicholas Winton: I wasn’t heroic. I was never in danger Read more

Jan Hunat, a Czech glass engraver who has been commissioned to carry out the work, will travel to the UK to take handprints from grandchildren of those in the transports to give the monument extra authenticity.

The glass will be reinforced to make it virtually impregnable to vandalism by heating it at high temperature in an oven, Hunat said. “It’s going to be 30mm thick, so you won’t be able to break it even if you attack it with a hammer,” he said. “It’s going to be beautiful. It’s a great honour to be asked to do the work.”

Winton organised eight children’s evacuations from Prague in 1939, the last leaving in August. A final planned transport of 250 children was stopped on 1 September, the day Germany invaded Poland. Most of those on board later died in the Holocaust.