The Rescue of the Prague Refugees 1938-39

Book excerpt: The story of the Prague Kindertransports and the splendid achievements of Sir Nicholas Winton and Trevor Chadwick in getting some 660 children to safety has often been told. This was only part of a much larger rescue operation. Before Winton and Chadwick even arrived, Doreen Warriner was making Lists of those most in danger, negotiating for visas and shepherding trainloads of people to safety. When she left Prague in April 1939, spirited out of the country before the Gestapo could arrest her for smuggling ‘wanted’ refugees on her trains, her successor was the indomitable Canadian Beatrice Wellington, who was more than a match for the Gestapo, and indeed for a slow-moving British officialdom. These two were directly responsible for saving some thousands of men, women and children. This book reveals the full extend of the British rescue effort for the first time. It devotes a chapter to each of the major participants – each one a fascinating character, and four of them willing to drop whatever they were doing in their lives to come to the aid of those in danger.