Nicholas Winton Memorial
Prague Map Tour for the Deaf Community
Popis: NICHOLAS WINTON MEMORIAL (POMNÍK NICHOLASE WINTONA) The Nicholas Winton Memorial is located on Platform 1 at Prague Main Railway Station (Praha hlavní nádraží). Sir Nicholas Winton (1909–2015) was a British humanitarian who helped rescue 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Nazi persecution in Czechoslovakia in 1939. He organised eight transports that took the children from Prague to safety in Great Britain, where foster families were waiting for them. Many of these children never saw their parents again, as their families were murdered during the Holocaust. The memorial was unveiled on September 1, 2009, and created by sculptor Flor Kent. The bronze sculpture depicts Nicholas Winton holding a young boy, with a little girl standing beside him and a suitcase at their feet. It symbolises the children's journey to safety and the painful separation from their families. AN EXTRAORDINARY STORY For almost 50 years, Winton kept his rescue work largely private. His story became widely known in 1988, when he was reunited with some of the children he had saved during a BBC television programme. Today, their descendants number in the thousands. In 2017, another memorial, called the Farewell Memorial, was unveiled at the railway station. It features a train door with handprints symbolising the emotional farewells between children and their parents.