Sir Nicholas Winton, who organized the rescue of more than 600 children just before the start of World War Two, has died in England. He was 106 years old.
One of the people he saved now lives in Hartford.
For more than 50 years, Nicholas Winton told no one -- not even his wife -- about what he’d done. In the late 1980s, she found a scrapbook in their attic with photos of mostly Jewish children, along travel documents and plans for their escape.
Hartford resident Ivan Backer, now in his mid 80s, was one of them. He was born in Prague, and when he was ten years old, he was rescued from near-certain death in the Holocaust when he left Czechoslovakia on one of the "kindertransports" arranged by Nicholas Winton.
Backer grew up unaware of the role that Winton had played in saving his life.
Speaking last year to WNPR, Backer said the lesson of Nicholas Winton's life is that one person can make a difference.
“You know, we live in an age when so many of us feel helpless, and what can I as an individual do? Well, he was an individual. He had no organizational support, and yet he saved the lives of 669 children,” Backer said.
The descendants of those children now number more than 6,000.
Ivan Backer's forthcoming memoir called "My Train To Freedom" is scheduled to be released in January by Skyhorse Publishing.
