One Life

I have been meaning to see “ONE LIFE” for some time. It was on BBC1 on Monday. It’s the true story of Nicholas Winton, a stockbroker who decided to organise the repatriation of just under 700 Jewish kids from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Nazi invasion.

He faces implacable obstacles from the Foreign Office and immigration authorities and even from the resident refugee organisation in Czechoslovakia. Undeterred he organised foster homes, visas and money.

This is not the most impressive part.

Nicky Winton did all of this as it was the right thing to do. He did not court publicity, nor self aggrandisement, and if anything was bemused by both.

At the start of the film you see the aged Winton shuffling about his Maidenhead home, being ordered by his wife Greta to tidy up his papers that were messing up the study. One attaché case he will not discard and this is his scrapbook of the transportation. Eventually he shows this to Betty Maxwell, whose husband Robert (the tycoon) was himself à Czech refugee. She passes it to Esther Rantzen, who organises a rather staged reunion of all the survivors.  Still Nicky Winton – though delighted to meet them all – is bemused. This was not the success story he craved and he was more upset that the ninth train he organised did not make it, but was intercepted by the Gestapo.

Anthony  Hopkins – one of our greatest actors – plays the senior Winton magisterially. He  does not declaim as a small gesture often suffices more.

Johnny Flynn plays the wartime Winton, Helena Bonham Carter his mother and Romolls Garai Doreen Warriner, the hard pressed operator on the ground for the refugee organisation. All are excellent.

It’s an inspiring story of how the little humble man beats the Nazi bigot. My late father used to say “A nice Englishman is the best person you can hope to meet …”

Nicky Winton was one.