Czech who helped children post-WWII home dies at 100

Josefina Napravilova traveled around Europe to find 40 children taken by Nazis from their parents

By AP 23 February 2014, 2:52 pm

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Josefina Napravilová (pablo.czech, CC_BY_SA via wikipedia)

PRAGUE — Josefina Napravilova, a Czech woman who worked tirelessly as a volunteer to locate dozens of children taken by the Nazis from their families during WWII, has died.

A museum in Lidice, where Napravilova was an honorary citizen, says she died Thursday at age 100 at a nursing home in the southern town of Tabor.

In the post-war chaos, Napravilova traveled to Germany, Austria, Poland and Sweden to find 40 children and help them return home.

A boy from Lidice, a town completely destroyed by the Nazis most of whose citizens were killed in retaliation for the assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich, was among them.

Napravilova worked for the International Refugee Organization in Vienna in 1948 before moving to Canada the following year. She returned in 1994.