Dame Esther Rantzen, who died yesterday at the age of 86, has left behind a legacy of extraordinary kindness defined largely by her charitable endeavours.
But beyond her work in founding Childline and The Silver Line, and her campaigning in favour of assisted dying, among her most pivotal career moments was the spotlight she shone upon one of the Second World War’s most unsung heroes.
Nicholas Winton, an unassuming stockbroker from Hampstead, had been harbouring a secret for almost 50 years when his wife Grete found a scrapbook in their attic at home in Maidenhead in 1987.
Inside the scrapbook were the names and photographs of hundreds of children that, it would transpire, a 29-year-old Nicholas had helped to rescue from Nazi-occupied Prague before the war broke out.
In all, Sir Nicholas had helped 669 children, who were mostly Jewish, to escape Czechoslovakia for Britain by train – where he helped to secure sponsorship and homes for them thanks to a law enacted in the wake of Kristallnacht.
And in one of television’s most remarkable moments, he was reunited with many of them, and the families they were able to raise thanks to his life-saving efforts, thanks to Dame Esther and the team on That’s Life!
The moment was later recreated in painstaking detail in 2023 film One Life, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins – with descendants of those he had helped to save.
Dame Esther Rantzen and Sir Nicholas Winton, whom she introduced to the world as the saviour of more than 600 children from Nazi-occupied Prague in 1939
Sir Nicholas Winton meets Vera Gissen, whom he had helped evacuate from Prague in 1939, in the first of two memorable moments on That’s Life! in February 1988
The moment was later touchingly recreated in the 2023 biopic One Life, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as Sir Nicholas in his later years
Ostensibly a light-hearted consumer affairs show, That’s Life! juggled silly segments featuring talented pets and rudely shaped vegetables with hard-hitting investigative journalism into dangerous products, conmen and child abuse.
Dame Esther’s vivacious personality made the show, not least when she was arrested as she urged passers-by to try ‘bat soup’, and memorably encouraged Annie Mizen to try champagne as the charming 80-something informed her: ‘I’m not a drinker.’
But among her most memorable moments, still widely shared online today, is the reunion of Sir Nicholas – finally knighted in 2003 – with many of those he had saved from inevitable extermination.
After Grete discovered the notebook in 1987, she brought it to Holocaust historian Elizabeth Maxwell, wife of the newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell, expressing hopes of tracing some of those children Nicholas had saved.
On February 28 1988, Maxwell ran Sir Nicholas’s story in the Sunday Mirror, labelling those he had helped to save ‘The Lost Children’.
And the very same day Dame Esther invited him to appear on That’s Life! – with a surprise up her sleeve.
Sir Nicholas knew one of the people in the audience: Rudolf Wessely, a teacher who had been on one of the Kindertransport trains out of Prague.
He had met Mr Wessely at a meeting of Abbeyfield Homes, a sheltered housing charity he founded in later life, in 1987. But that was not, as it turns out, the reason he had been invited onto the show.
Sitting in the front row, Sir Nicholas asked a woman next to him if he could swap seats. She ignored him, and for good reason.
That woman was Vera Gissen – who, as 11-year-old Vera Diamant, had been among those that he had helped evacuate from Prague in 1939 and had been trying to identify the man who had saved her life.
‘We did find her name, Vera Diamant, as she was then, on this list,’ Dame Esther said cheerily, adding: ‘Vera Gissen is here with us tonight. Hello Vera.’
The camera panned to Mrs Gissen who – now very much acknowledging the man next to her – turned to Sir Nicholas, grabbed his hand, and pulled him into an embrace as the audience burst into applause.
Sir Nicholas, visibly stunned, could be seen dabbing his eyes with his handkerchief as Mrs Gissen told him: ‘Thank you.’
He was reunited with even more survivors on That’s Life! a few months later in one of television’s greatest ever moments
A visibly moved Sir Nicholas could be seen wiping away tears after being reunited with his ‘children’
Esther Rantzen with Sir Nicholas Winton’s scrapbook on That’s Life! The discovery of the notebook by his wife Grete sparked the saga that would reunite him with those he saved
The That’s Life! moment turned Sir Nicholas into a national hero. The Daily Mail labelled him ‘Britain’s own Schindler’ – after German hero Oskar Schindler
‘Hang on to your handkerchief,’ Dame Esther said, before revealing that two more children – Hanusch Schnabl and Milena Fleischmann (better known now as Holocaust awareness campaigner Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines) – were sat next to him as well.
Addressing a clearly emotional Sir Nicholas, the presenter told him: ‘I know you don’t want thanks, but you’re certainly going to get them.’
The moment turned Nicholas Winton into a national hero. The Daily Mail labelled him ‘Britain’s own Schindler’, after Oskar Schindler, the German who saved the lives of 1,200 Jewish children during the Second World War.
More was to come. On July 3 1988, Sir Nicholas was invited back onto That’s Life! to revisit the segment – and Dame Esther had another sensational surprise primed.
Asking the audience if any of them ‘owes their life to Nicholas Winton’, around two dozen people sat immediately around him in the studio stood up – all children evacuated from Prague thanks to his efforts.
Sir Nicholas flashed a brief grin – then, as he sat down, wiped tears from both eyes.
That it took decades for his understated heroism to come to light is no surprise: not even his wife Grete knew he had travelled to Prague in 1938 at the behest of his friend, Martin Blake, who was working with Czech refugee groups.
Sir Nicholas – known as ‘Nicky’ among his family – spent just three weeks in the city but set in motion part of what became known as the Kindertransport operation that would ultimately rescue 10,000 children from across Nazi-occupied Europe.
He chipped in to cover costs, dealt with the heavy bureaucracy and organisation and, reportedly, forged travel documents and bribed officials when frustrated by delays.
With assurances given that each child would come with a £50 guarantee (£2,900 now) to cover the costs of repatriation post-conflict, the first train left on March 14 1939, a day before the Nazis fully occupied the country.
Eight would leave in all, with collaborators in Prague including Trevor Chadwick seeing them off before being met by Sir Nicholas and others in London. The children were then settled with willing British families, never to see their own parents again.
What was to be the last train was cancelled by the Nazis on September 1 – the day they invaded Poland and closed all borders.
Sir Nicholas and his wife Grete pictured in Prague in 1991. He never told her of his heroic efforts until she discovered his scrapbook
Sir Nicholas was knighted in 2003 for services to humanity – on top of a 1986 MBE in recognition of his charity work
Of the 250 children on board, just two are thought to have survived the war, according to an interview Vera Gissing gave in 2006. The failure to get the final train through haunted Sir Nicholas for the rest of his life.
Initially a conscientious objector, he later joined the RAF and, post-war, he worked for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development as the rebuilding of a battle-scarred Europe began.
Then, following a failed bid to run for Maidenhead’s town council, he disappeared into civilian life. Even as he committed himself to charity work, he never mentioned what he considered his unremarkable and ordinary deeds in Prague to anyone.
That was until 1987 – when Grete found the scrapbook and set the ball rolling on what became one of television’s greatest ever moments.
It gave Sir Nicholas the recognition he had long deserved, and Dame Esther would keep in contact with Sir Nicholas regularly, the pair reuniting on screen for ITV documentary Winton’s Children in 2003. He died in 2015, at the age of 106.
She would later reveal her belief that he remained humble about his achievements because he was haunted by the final train that failed to leave Prague.
Speaking on the phone before his That’s Life! appearance, Sir Nicholas had told Dame Esther that he ‘hadn’t saved enough’.
She recalled in 2023: ‘I said, “Why do you say that?”. And he said because there was a last train, it had 250 children on the train… they had closed the border and all those children had to be taken off the train.
‘That moment is reconstructed in this feature film [One Life]. It traumatised Nicky, and I think for him, the memory was of his failure.’
But even now, his legacy endures: a statue of him was erected in Prague Main Train Station in 2009, as a ‘Winton Train’ with descendants of those he saved on board left Prague on the anniversary of what should have been the final train’s escape.
It followed the fateful train’s route across land and sea before a final train brought passengers into Liverpool Street – where Sir Nicholas waited to greet them, as he had some 70 years prior.
Another statue was erected outside Maidenhead Train Station in 2010, while Sir Nicholas would receive the Czech Republic’s highest honour, the Order of the White Lion, in 2014.
Johnny Flynn and Sir Anthony Hopkins would later play him in One Life, the critically acclaimed biopic that ended with recreations of the That’s Life! reunions.
The film’s epilogue reveals that the audience in its recreation of the show was drawn entirely from the 6,000 people who are alive thanks to his quiet heroism.
Some of those in the audience travelled from Switzerland, France and Romania to England to be in the film, to pay their own touching tribute to a man who wanted no thanks for going above and beyond.
- READ MORE: Dame Esther Rantzen capitvated 22 million viewers – but grew up in a house without a TV. Then when they got one it was kept in the hall so it didn’t spoil conversation
