A man with one of the greatest stories i've ever heard died today, and I figured I'd share it. Especially with how nowadays the news focuses on celebrities deaths (and they always seem to be overdoses in bathtubs). It drives me nuts. This guy deserves more TV coverage than Michael Jackson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Heath Ledger, Whitney Houston, Whitney Houston's Daughter. Pretty much all of them.
This was an amazing person.
His name is Sir Nicholas Winton, and he was a British man who actually made a difference in this world. He orchestrated a program that saved at least 669 Jewish children from the Nazis during WW2.
I learned about him about 10 years ago when I was a student in Czech Republic, and his story still is very special to me today. This was a guy who actually saw a tragedy and did something to help stop it.
To sum it up, he was visiting Prague on a humanitarian mission in the 1930's and he couldn't stand by and watch the Nazis send the Jews to their deaths. So he orchestrated a program that would get Jewish children out of Czechoslovakia and into England. By day he was like a stock broker or something, but by night he orchestrated a program that got Czech Jewish Children their VISAs and all the documents (and the money) they needed to get to England (and he set up their adoptions with British Families). He's about as special as they come.
What I like more about it is that he did it because it was the right thing to do. He wasn't a man with an ego. He'd really have been forgotten if his wife didn't look through a scrap book and beg him to tell his story in 1988. He later was on a talk show telling his story, and he said that the kids he saved wouldn't remember him. But the catch was that the whole audience was filled with the children he saved. It was honestly probably the most moving thing I've ever seen on television. He was crying, they were crying, I was crying. Unbelievable. They call themselves "Winton's Children". Most of these kid's biological parents were killed by the Nazis.
I can't really do this guy justice with my post, but the biggest thing to me about this guy was that he actually did something. I can say "I don't steal, I don't lie, I don't cheat, I don't murder" and plenty of other "I dont's", but this guy can actually say that he's done something. And that's what makes a hero in my opinion.
Here's an article on him. Getting the text to work right just isn't happening in the post unfortunately, so all I can post is a link.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-33350880
