{"id":42792,"date":"2024-01-01T11:00:52","date_gmt":"2024-01-01T10:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1949991"},"modified":"2024-01-01T13:24:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T12:24:00","slug":"one-life-true-story-surviving-kinder-remember-nicholas-winton","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/one-life-true-story-surviving-kinder-remember-nicholas-winton\/","title":{"rendered":"One Life true story: Surviving Kinder remember Nicholas Winton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three of the children saved by Nicholas Winton and the Kindertransport share their experiences. <\/p>

By Patrick Cremona\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Monday, 01 January 2024 at 10:00 AM<\/p>

\n\n

The new film One Life \u2013 which has just been released in UK cinemas \u2013 tells the remarkable true story of Nicholas Winton and the Kindertransport.<\/p>\n

The film chronicles both how Winton helped save hundreds of Central European Jewish children from the Nazis by arranging transport to the UK just before the outbreak of World War II, and how decades later he met many of those he had saved for the first time \u2013 coming face to face with them on a highly emotional episode of Esther Rantzen\u2019s That\u2019s Life! in 1988.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the release, RadioTimes.com<\/a> spoke to three of the surviving Kinder, Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines, Vera Schaufeld, and Renate Collins \u2013 all of whom are now in their 90s \u2013 about their memories of the Kindertrasport and meeting Nicholas Winton, who died aged 106 in 2015, all those years later.<\/p>\n

Read on to see what they each had to say.<\/p>\n

Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"Lady\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>
Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines MBE<\/span><\/figcaption> Simon Hill<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

\u201cI was nine and my sister was three-and-a-half, and I often say to people: I know it happened, I\u2019ve got proof that it happened, but I cannot physically remember coming through there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were taken up by this gentleman who we lived with in Ashton Under Lyne, our foster parents were very good and we were very happy with them. But with my memory, I can tell you what happened, but I cannot see it in my memory\u2026 it\u2019s 90 years ago, nearly 90 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got that phone call and I heard \u2018This is Esther Rantzen\u2019 it\u2019s like somebody\u2019s saying \u2018this is David Beckham\u2019. I thought someone was pulling my leg and I said, \u2018And I\u2019m the Queen of England,\u2019 that was my answer!<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I discovered it was Esther Ranzten phoning because she\u2019d found my name on the list that was in the scrapbook of Nicholas Winton. And I was one of the people they invited to come to the studio in London to meet him. And that\u2019s how I met the man who saved my life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were seven of us there and it so happened that we were all at school together, we had a Czechoslovakian school during the war. But not all the children in that school were part of his transport. And the people watching that programme who eventually got in touch with Esther Rantzen and turned up at the studio, I certainly didn\u2019t know them all because we were all over England.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the second part where everybody stands up, I didn\u2019t actually come down for that second part. So every one of them will have had their own story to tell.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce he\u2019d done what he could do and he knew he could do no more, he thought, \u2018OK, I\u2019ll get on with the next thing.\u2019 And what he did, he actually drove an ambulance, he then joined the Air Force and his eyesight wasn\u2019t good enough to fly but he was a flight instructor.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then after he was doing positive stuff, he did a lot of voluntary work. And it was an altruistic life. He never looked for reward, he never looked for thanks. He was a very\u2026 when I say gentle, he was<\/em> gentle, but he was also a very firm sort of person. He knew exactly what he wanted and what he wanted to do.<\/p>\n