Yorkshire Holocaust centre to pay tribute to Sir Nicholas Winton

The man who saved close to 700 children from the Nazis will be honoured next week on the first anniversary of a new Holocaust education centre in Yorkshire.

Barbara Winton will pay tribute to her late father Sir Nicholas Winton, alongside one of the 669 children he saved, Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines. 

The pair will share the stage on September 15 in Huddersfield’s Holocaust Education and Learning Centre, with survivors and their families expected to attend the talk to listen to the pair trade anecdotes and reflect on the present day refugee crisis.

Czechoslovakia-born Grenfell-Baines will discuss her story. She boarded with her younger sister Eva one of the eight trains out of Prague organised by Sir Nicholas – fleeing Prague at the age of nine. 

The two sisters were taken into the care of a foster family in England until they were reunited with their mother, who fled via Norway a year later. 

The daughter of the man who helped save Lady Milena sees parallels between the lives her father helped save and the plight of refugees today.

“It’s extraordinary really. There were newspaper headlines saying ‘we don’t want enemy aliens here’ which is shocking but so resonant with what’s going on today,” she said. 

“However, many people took in children; some families even sent their own child away to a grandparent or aunt because they didn’t have room. Despite not being well off, they felt it was their duty to help.”

The event held in Yorkshire’s Holocaust Education and Learning Centre will mark the museum’s first anniversary since it opened its doors last year with lottery funding. 

The £1m centre is the only resource of its kind in the north of England and has received thousands of visitors, including school pupils, since its inception. 

It is the only resource of its kind in the north of England and delivers learning programmes exploring prejudice, extremism and intolerance.

Its interactive exhibition, titled Through Our Eyes, tells the stories of 16 survivors and refugees through photographs, digital testimony, artefacts and film.