H. Res. 583 
In the House of Representatives, U. S., 
September 17, 2007. 
Whereas during the Holocaust, in which some 6,000,000 
Jews were brutally put to death by the Government of 
Nazi Germany, a small number of individuals risked their 
lives and spent fortunes to save the lives of others be-
cause they were decent and courageous men and women 
of principle; 
Whereas, in October 1938, the Nazi Government occupied the 
Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia, which resulted in 
tens of thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing the occupied 
areas and seeking safety in the areas of as-yet unoccu-
pied Czechoslovakia; 
Whereas, in late 1938, a 29-year-old British businessman, 
Nicholas Winton, was encouraged by a friend at the Brit-
ish Embassy in Prague to forgo a ski vacation in the 
Alps to visit Prague and see first-hand the freezing ref-
ugee camps filled with Jewish families who had fled the 
Sudetenland; 
Whereas, in the face of this enormous suffering, Winton, 
moved by feelings of deep compassion, undertook a mas-
sive effort to help the children of many of these Jewish 
families escape these horrible circumstances, though at 
that time neither he nor they knew the full extent of the 
horrors that awaited them;
•HRES 583 EH 
Whereas Winton sought to find friendly governments which 
would grant asylum to these Jewish refugee children, and 
his efforts were rebuffed by the countries whose help he 
requested, until the Governments of Sweden and the 
United Kingdom agreed to accept children from the 
Czechoslovakian refugee camps; 
Whereas Winton and other volunteers gathered names and 
other information on children whose parents recognized 
the importance of getting their children beyond the reach 
of the Nazi Government, and Winton was able to use this 
information to identify foster homes for these refugee 
children; 
Whereas Winton took the lead in raising funds to pay for the 
transportation of the children from Prague to Britain 
and Sweden and to pay an enormous government-im-
posed fee to cover the costs of future repatriation; 
Whereas, on March 14, 1939, the first 20 children left 
Prague under Winton’s auspices, and the very next day 
the Nazi army overran the remainder of un-occupied 
Czechoslovakia; 
Whereas the heroic effort of Winton and other volunteers to 
assist these young children flee occupied Czechoslovakia 
continued for over six months until the outbreak of 
World War II on September 1, 1939, during which time 
669 children were able to leave in a total of eight sepa-
rate groups; 
Whereas the ninth group of some 250 children was scheduled 
to leave Prague on September 3, 1939, but was halted 
following the outbreak of hostilities, and none of these 
250 children lived to see the end of World War II six 
years later;
•HRES 583 EH 
Whereas this group of 669 children, saved through the efforts 
of Winton and his collaborators, includes doctors, nurses, 
teachers, musicians, artists, writers, pilots, ministers, sci-
entists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and a Member of the 
British Parliament, and today they and their children 
and grandchildren and great-grandchildren number over 
5,000 individuals, and these individuals live in the United 
States, Canada, Australia, the Czech Republic, Britain, 
Germany, and other countries; 
Whereas Winton’s achievement went unrecognized and 
unacknowledged for more than half a century until his 
wife, who knew nothing of this life-saving work, came 
across an old leather briefcase in an attic in which she 
found lists of the children, letters from their parents and 
other materials documenting his efforts; 
Whereas, of the 15,000 Czechoslovakian Jewish children who 
fled to refugee camps or who were forced into concentra-
tion camps during the Nazi occupation, only a handful 
survived World War II, and Vera Gissing, one of the chil-
dren saved by Winton and the author of the script for 
the film ‘‘Nicholas Winton—the Power of Good’’, which 
won the Emmy Award in 2002, said that Winton ‘‘res-
cued the greater part of the Jewish children of my gen-
eration in Czechoslovakia. Very few of us met our parents 
again: they perished in concentration camps. Had we not 
been spirited away, we would have been murdered along-
side them.’’; and 
Whereas Winton has been honored with the title of Member 
of the British Empire (MBE), was awarded the Freedom 
of the City of Prague, received the Czech Order of T. G. 
Masaryk, and was given a knighthood from Queen Eliza-
beth II for services to humanity: Now, therefore, be it