![]() My sister was nine, and she doesn’t remember details either. He had already gone, so that was just my mother who had found out about the Winton train. People told him that the Germans would look for him, so he decided he needed to leave, thinking that he would then be able to help to get us out. He had been very politically active, and so he was told, not on the internet, not by a tweet or Twitter. “My father had already left, he escaped to Berlin on the 15th of March, when he knew that Germans were coming to Prague. And that is how Thomas Mann came to be able to leave Switzerland and come to the United States.” And president said: ‘That sounds like a really good idea, we would be helping Thomas Mann, and our country would be honored.’ And so, my father had gone to Switzerland, met with Thomas Mann, offered him Czech citizenship for him and his brother. Everybody knew about Thomas Mann, he was a very famous man. And he put that proposal to the president of Czechoslovakia. And with the honorary citizenship for the village, he would be able to get honorary citizenship for Czechoslovakia. He decided to ask his Town Council to offer Thomas Mann honorary citizenstip for the village. And so, my father had helped Thomas Mann get Czech citizenship. ![]() ![]() And Thomas Mann had escaped from Germany to Switzerland, because his books were being burnt and he was in danger. And the Germans were already burning books of people they didn’t like they were writing. He was a great reader, and there was a writer called Thomas Mann, who was German. I told you I was born and then we moved to Prague. He had been on the Town Council of the village I was born. If the question is why were they looking for him so quickly, that’s because some years earlier, he was a politician. “Well, he knew that the Germans would come, and that he was on the first list of people to be thrown to jail or worse. He wasn’t very interested in talking about all the things he had done, he just said that he was glad that he’d been able to help. So you can come when you’re in London.’ So we did, and we spent a wonderful day with him. Couple of years later, when I was in England with my husband, as I said, we went very often, I telephoned his house and said: ‘I’m one of those children, and I would very much like to meet you in person, could we come for a cup of tea.’ And his wife answered the phone and said: ‘Oh, nobody comes for a cup of tea. ![]() That was the first time that we knew who this person was. And at the end, he says: ‘Anybody who ows their life to Nicholas Winton, please stand up.’ And the whole audience stood up. And the interviewer said: ‘We have this book that you did this work bringing in some children in 1939.’ And he said: ‘Yes, I did.’ And at the end of the program… My sister is on his right, and a friend was on the left. He was told that he was just going to be asked about his life. And his wife found these documents and there was a television program, where there was a big audience. The family really wanted to be sure to understand, that there were two or three other people who were very helpful, as they were in Prague and he was in England. I think 50 years later, I forgot what year, Nicholas Winton became known to the public through a television program, in which the person had been given by Nickie’s wife the documents which he had put together when he was bringing the children to England in 1939. Nobody knew, who that was or how we got to England. “So, you were asking me about Nicholas Winton.
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