page_title: Nicholas Winton
section_title: Honours
hierarchical_section_title: Nicholas Winton / Honours
caption_attribution_description: English: Memorial of Nicholas Winton, the saviour of 669 jewish children from former Czechoslovakia; located in Prague Main railway station, installed 2009-SEP-01, sculptor Flor Kent (her other sculpture “Für Das Kind Kindertransport Memorial” was installed in the Liverpool Street station, September 2003) Čeština: Památník sira Nicholase Wintona na pražském hlavním nádraží, odhalený při příležitosti vypravení „Winton Train“ 1. září 2009, sochařka Flor Kentová
context_page_description: Sir Nicholas George Winton MBE was a British banker and humanitarian who established an organisation to rescue children at risk from Nazi Germany. Born to German-Jewish parents who had emigrated to Britain at the beginning of the 20th century, Winton supervised the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II. Winton found homes for the children and arranged for their safe passage to Britain.
  This operation was later known as the Czech Kindertransport.
  His work went unnoticed by the world for nearly 50 years, until 1988 when he was invited to the BBC television programme That's Life!, where he was reunited with several of the children he had saved. The British press celebrated him and dubbed him the "British Schindler." In 2003, Winton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for "services to humanity, in saving Jewish children from Nazi Germany occupied Czechoslovakia". On 28 October 2014, he was awarded the highest honour of the Czech Republic, the Order of the White Lion, by Czech President Miloš Zeman. He died in 2015 at the age of 106.
context_section_description: In the 1983 Queen's Birthday Honours, Winton was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his work in establishing the Abbeyfield homes for the elderly in Britain, and in the 2003 New Year Honours, he was knighted for services to humanity, in recognition of his work on the Czech Kindertransport. He met the Queen again during her state visit to Bratislava, Slovakia, in October 2008. In 2003, Winton received the Pride of Britain Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2010, Winton was named a British Hero of the Holocaust by the British Government.
  Winton was awarded the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Fourth Class, by the Czech President Václav Havel in 1998. In 2008, he was honoured by the Czech government in several ways. An elementary school in Kunžak is named after him, and he was awarded the Cross of Merit of the Minister of Defence, Grade I. The Czech government nominated him for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize.
  The minor planet 19384 Winton was named in his honour by Czech astronomers Jana Tichá and Miloš Tichý.
  A statue of Winton stands on Platform 1 of the Praha hlavní nádraží railway station. Created by Flor Kent, it was unveiled on 1 September 2009 as part of a larger commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the last Kindertransport train (see also Winton train, below).
  There are also three memorials at Liverpool Street Station in London, where the Kindertransport children arrived. In September 2010, another statue of Winton was unveiled, this time at Maidenhead railway station by Home Secretary Theresa May, MP for Maidenhead. Created by Lydia Karpinska, it depicts Winton sitting on a bench and reading a book.
  Winton was baptised as a Christian by his parents, but his Jewish ancestry disqualified him from being declared a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in Israel. As an adult, he was not active in any particular religion. In a 2015 interview, Winton told Stephen Sackur he had become disillusioned with religion during the war as he could not reconcile religious movements "praying for victory on both sides of the same war". Winton went on to describe his personal beliefs: "I believe in ethics, and if everybody believed in ethics we'd have no problems at all. That's the only way out; forget the religious side."
  Winton received the Wallenberg Medal on 27 June 2013 in London. The following year, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation established a literary competition named after Winton. The contest is for essays by high school students about Winton's legacy.
  Winton was awarded the Freedom of the City of London on 23 February 2015.
  In 2019 his old school, Stowe, opened a new boys' day house, named Winton.
caption: Statue at Prague main railway station, by Flor Kent, unveiled on 1 September 2009
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