Google Doodle marks Sir Nicholas Winton’s 111th birthday
Organiser of the kindertransport, often dubbed 'Britain's Schindler', is featured by the search engine
Today’s Google Doodle honours the architect of the kindertransport, Sir Nicholas Winton, who would have been 111 today.
The humanitarian arranged eight trains to carry 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia through Germany to Britain at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.
The doodle depicts Winton meeting Kinder at a train station.
He died in 2015 at the age of 106, and following a Jewish News campaign, Royal Mail agreed to issue a special commemorative stamp in his honour.
Born on this day in 1909, he set in motion a huge rescue effort to save children, which required him to find homes for them with British families, raise money, convince officials, and even forge documents.
In March 1939, the first train left Prague, and over the next few months, a total of 669 children were rescued to safety.
For nearly 50 years however, the world knew nothing of what Winton had done – not even his wife. That all changed in 1988, when she discovered documents in their attic referencing the daring rescues – and his efforts were revealed in a dramatic television programme ‘that’s life’:
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