PM lauds ‘UK’s Schindler’ who saved 669

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin both mourn the passing of Sir Nicholas Winton, a humanitarian who almost single-handedly saved 669 children — mostly Jewish — from the Holocaust.

Winton arranged trains to carry children from Nazi-occupied Prague to Britain, battling bureaucracy at both ends and saving them from almost certain death. He died yesterday aged 106.

“The Jewish people and the State of Israel owe an immense debt to Sir Nicholas Winton, who on his own, saved hundreds of Jewish children from the clutches of Nazism,” Netanyahu says, adding that “in a world permeated by evil and apathy, Winton dedicated himself to saving the helpless and the innocent.”

Rivlin also noted that “just as the Holocaust will forever remain etched in the Jewish consciousness, so too the names of those who risked their own lives to save Jews, and especially Jewish children, will remain in our memory as heroes of those darkest of times. Sir Nicholas Winton was a man who valued human life above all else, and there are those who are alive today as a testament to his dedication and sacrifice. May his memory be blessed.”