Posted on 10/29/2014 9:38:02 AM PDT by Winniesboy
Sir Nicholas Winton awarded with Order of the White Lion in Czech Republic
Sir Nicholas Winton, a British man who saved 669 children from the Nazis, was awarded the highest civilian honour in the Czech Republic on Tuesday.
Winton, now 105, was presented with the Order of the White Lion by the Czech president in a special ceremony at Prague Castle.
Winton, who has often been nicknamed “the British Schindler”, organised the transportation and settlement of 669 children over nine months before the second world war broke out in September 1939. Most of those he saved were Jewish children living in then-German-occupied Czechoslovakia whose families were later imprisoned or murdered in concentration camps....
Winton gave a speech during the ceremony. He said: “I want to thank you all for this enormous expression of thanks for something which happened to me a heck of a long time ago. I am delighted that so many of the children are still about and are here to thank me.
“England was the only country at that time willing to accept unaccompanied minors. I thank the British people for making room to accept them, and of course the enormous help given by so many of the Czechs who were at that time doing what they could to
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Bravo! For the Brits! For Sir Winton.
Unknown to the world, Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco, saved the lives of over $60,000 Jews during the Holocaust
If the ‘freedom fighting’ Republicans had won in the Spanish Civil War it is very probable that the Nazis would have overtaken Spain...that could have been disastrous.
WW2- FRANCO HELPS JEWS
http://strangeside.com/ww2-franco-helps-jews/
In 5684/1924 the Spanish government of Miguel Primo de Rivera decreed that every Sephardi Jew had the right to claim Spanish citizenship.
ANGEL OF BUDAPEST
During World War II, Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco, played a delicate balancing game. While trading and helping Germany on the one hand, he resolutely refused to join Hitler’s Axis powers on the other and maintained a sort of neutrality.
As Hitler said after an unsuccessful attempt to talk him around in 5700/1940, “I would rather spend two hours in the dentist’s chair than have another meeting with him.”
The most the Germans got from him was the Blue Division, which fought on the Russian front for three years until recalled after vociferous complaints from the Allies.
Although not an unequivocal lover of Jews, Franco sporadically helped Jews escape the Nazis’ clutches and published a widely disseminated booklet titled “Spain and the Jews.”
The best known instance of Spanish aid was during 5694/1944 when Budapest Jews were being railroaded to Auschwitz and numbers of neutral diplomats were striving to save as many as they could. Although the most famous of them was Raoul Wallenberg who had been sent by Sweden for that express purpose, there were many others.
These included the Spanish Chargé d’Affaires (ambassador) to Hungary, Ángel Sanz Briz and his successor, Giorgi Perlasca. If you are wondering why a Spanish ambassador was succeeded by an Italian name, read further.
Ángel Sanz Briz became known as the Angel of Budapest thanks to his work with Raoul Wallenberg. The alibi Briz presented to Adolf Eichman and other Nazis was that he was issuing letters of protection to Hungarian Jews due to the right of every Sephardic Jew to Spanish nationality. Despite his vaunted expertise in Jewish affairs, it seems that Eichman failed to realize that few Hungarian Jews were of Spanish descent.
Although he had been granted the offi cial right to save only two hundred people, he found a devious way to circumvent this: “The two hundred units that had been granted to me I turned them into two hundred families; and the two hundred families multiplied indefinitely due to the simple procedure of not issuing a document or passport with a number higher than 200!”
He was assisted by Giorgi Perlasca who was an example of a person who does not allow idealism to destroy common decency. Although he had avidly supported Mussolini’s fascism in the 20s, even risking his life as a soldier during Italy’s crushing of Abyssinia and fighting for the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War, he rejected Fascist ideology after Mussolini joined with the Nazis in 5698/1938 and introduced anti-Semitic laws in Italy.
“I couldn’t understand the discrimination against the Jews,” he exclaimed in later years. “So many of my friends were Jews, in Fiume, Trieste, and Como. In Spain, the commander of a battery in my artillery regiment was a Jew from Rome.”
During the war Perlasca made a living supplying livestock to the Italian army. After being thrown into an internment camp by the Nazis after Italy surrendered to the Allies and left Germany in the lurch, Perlasca fled to a Spanish embassy, invoked his right to Spanish citizenship due to him because of his support for Franco during the Spanish Civil War, and volunteered to help Jews escape as he “couldn’t stand the sight of people being branded like animals” and “seeing children being killed.”
He helped Briz and other diplomats protect Jews and smuggle them out. When Briz left for Switzerland, and Spain was thinking of closing the embassy down, Perlasca falsely informed the Hungarian government that Briz would be coming back and served as his “substitute” under the fake name “Jorge.” Through this farce he kept the embassy and its safe houses functioning another two months and continued to hand out safe conduct passes on the basis of Spain’s 1924 law.
TOE TO TOE WITH EICHMAN
During December 5704/1944, Perlasca had rescued two young boys from a line of Jews being loaded into freight cars and shoved them into his car when a German soldier objected and started trying to get them back. Things might have gotten out of hand had a Geman Lieutenant Colonel not strode over and cynically told Perlasca,
“Go ahead and take them. Their time will come!”
Raoul Wallenberg happened to be present.
“You realize who that (Lieutenant Colonel) was, don’t you?” he asked Perlasca.
“No, who was it?”
“That was Adolf Eichman.”
“I took them over to one of our safe houses,” Perlasca related years later, “and once we were there I realized that they weren’t two boys after all. They were brother and sister… We kept them for a few days and then we handed them over to the Red Cross… But I’ll always remember when I saw them walking forward together in that line. I think I’ll remember them rather than so many others because they were so strikingly alike, because they were alone, and because they were so beautiful.”
With incredible humility, Perlasca returned to Italy without telling what he had done to a soul, and lived in obscurity until some Hungarian Jewesses came across him in the 80s. Baruch Tenenbaum, founder of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, mentions other Spanish diplomats who helped save Jews including Propper de Callejón and Bernardo Rolland de Miota in France, Miguel Ángel Muguiro in Budapest, José Ruíz Santaella in Berlin, José de Rojas y Moreno in Bucharest, Sebastián de Romero Radigales in Salonika, and Julio Palencia in Sophia, Bulgaria.
ANGEL OF CAIRO
A more recent instance of Spain’s revised attitude towards Jews was after 5727/1967 when Egypt had been pulverized during the Six Day War. Their air force destroyed and thrown out of Sinai, they wreaked vengeance on their tiny Jewish community that had shrunk from about 80,000 Jews in 5708/1948 to a measly 2,500 in 5727/1967, throwing at least 425 of its men into jail. Other Arab countries too began terrorizing their few remaining Jews.
This time another angel of mercy came to the rescue, Spanish ambassador, Angel Sagaz. This was after 75 year old Franco decided to do a last good deed for the Jews under the prodding of the Jewish community of Madrid, American rabbonim, the Sephardic community of Chicago, national Jewish organizations and American offi cials working through the Spanish embassy in Washington and the Spanish delegation of the UN.
Franco sent instructions to his diplomats in Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco to help all Jews, whether Sephardic or otherwise, and to provide Egyptian Jews with documents to leave. Following instructions, Angel Sagaz, helped over 615 families escape during the next two years, even transferring some of their jewelry (which Egypt forbade them to take with them) out of the country in the Spanish diplomatic bag.
In the midst of this rescue operation Israel committed a blunder that could have torpedoed everything. At the time, Spain was trying to organize a vote of protest against England’s continued occupation of the Gibraltar Rock seized from Spain in 5564/1704. Stupidly, an Israeli representative rose up in the United Nations and stated that Israel was not participating in the vote in retaliation to Spain’s sending of the Blue Division to help Nazi Germany during World War II.
Despite a brief squabble the rescue continued, demonstrating that hearts of rulers’ harden or soften according to the dictates of Above.
(Sources: a) Rein, Raanan, Vice Rector of Tel Aviv University. Diplomacy, Propaganda, and Humanitarian Gestures: Francoist Spain and Egyptian Jews, 1956-1968. b) Tenenbaum, Baruch. “The Banality of Goodness.” University of Notre Dame Press, 1998. c)Ysart, Federico. Spain and the Jews.)
Wow! What an amazing story! How so many Jewish lives were saved, during WWII and long afterward.
Franco was never the monster the Left made him out to be, and his triumph in 1936-39 was a far preferable outcome to communist victory. A dictator maybe, but one who bequeathed to his people both democracy and a restored monarchy. He applied the 1924 law to save Jewish lives even though it did not affect Spain directly.
Italians never really embraced Nazi antisemitism. Some acted heroically to save Jews as it is now learned.
Franco’s rescue of Jews from an enraged Arab world in 1967 is especially noteworthy.
Congratulations to Sir Nicholas for his heroic work & for still being with us to receive this honor, not to mention his humble regard for keeping his accomplishments secret.
No mention in Wiki or anywhere of when he was knighted, unless becoming Member of the O.B.E. conferred that title.
Thank you for the note. Good to know.
It doesn't. Being an MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) though significant, is a much lower award than a Knighthood. Nicholas Winton was made an MBE in 1983 for work he did in establishing homes for the elderly.
His Knighthood came in 2002 for his work on the Kindertransport during the Second World War. The type of Knighthood he has is what is referred to as being a 'Knight Bachelor'. It's not part of any of the Orders of Knighthood. For this reason, he still holds his MBE (if he had been made a Knight of the British Empire (KBE) it would have superseded his MBE).
The reason for making him a Knight Bachelor is because it makes it clear that he has received an Honour from the Queen twice for two different reasons, rather than (as sometimes happened) simply being initially given a lesser honour and then later being given a greater one for the same thing.
(Note, to be clear, in describing the MBE has a lesser honour, I do not want to suggest it isn't a high honour in its own right - I hold an equivalent rank in the Order of Australia (AM) and I am bloody proud of it (it's also why I've spent such a lot of time studying how this all works) - but being a 'Member' of these orders is the base rank of the Honours system - almost every other Honour ranks higher.)
Sir Nicholas Winton - BBC Programme "That's Life" aired in 1988
It begins with him meeting one of the people he saved after more than forty years - and just gets better from there.
What Sir Nicholas did - and a lot of others as well - must never be forgotten.
I have a friend whose father was one of the rescued children. He stayed on in England for the rest of his life, and had a very successful career as a doctor which ended some years ago...yet here’s his rescuer still going strong at 105.
A very well deserved tribute to Sir Nicholas Winton, in particularly, considering England closed the doors of Palestine to fleeing Jews, and FDR denied the Jews entrance into the U.S. during the Holocaust. (Remember the S.S. Saint Louis)
Lies.
The UK is a hellhole of anti-Semitism and dhimmitude. Didn’t ya know.
Its possible to despise the Communists, despise the utter romantic claptrap about the International Brigades and also at the same time greatly dislike Franco. I think either side’s victory would have been/was a tragedy for a great country and a lovely people.
And before we all get weepy about old Frank, lets not forget that he happily sent Spanish troops eastwards in 1941, to fight alongside the Nazis in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Sorry, but I am struggling to gather the admiration for him that you and others here clearly have.
And I say that as an avowed Spanophile.
Franco was the lesser of two evils if that is how he is to be judged. I do not see moral equivalence between the Falangists & the communists. Look at communist rule in Portugal after the 1910 revolution to see what a communist Spain would have looked like.
The Blue Division was a sop to Hitler & nothing more; disbanded by 1943. Franco kept Spain out of WWII, the devastation of the Civil War was bad enough.
A true dictator sees to who will succeed him. Now...is Spain still a dictatorship?
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