One Life: Sir Anthony Hopkins as Sir Nicholas Winton

Sir Nicholas Winton has been called the British Schindler, but his heroic rescue work went almost completely unrecognized until 1988. Of course, hardly anyone knew who Oskar Schindler was before the 1993 film. To this day, few people have heard of Varian Fry and the noble Raoul Wallenberg died in a Soviet prison, most likely sometime in the late 1950s. The modest Winton never sought fame, so he is surprised when it belatedly finds him in James Hawes’s One Life, which opens Friday in theaters.

When the National Socialists invaded the Sudetenland, most of the UK government buried their heads in the sand, but a young stockbroker of Jewish German heritage sprang into action. Hinton arrived in Prague as a representative of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, who believed his expertise in finance and bureaucratic paperwork could come in handy. The local chair Doreen Warriner was focusing on the most at-risk political refugees, because she barely had the bandwidth to handle them.

However, Winton is so struck by the appalling conditions endured by the largely but not exclusively Jewish children in makeshift camps, he launches an ambitious campaign that becomes known as the Kindertransport. British immigration authorities are not quite as obstructionist as the notoriously antisemitic Breckinridge Long in the U.S. State Department, but they require a fifty-pound deposit to insure the children would not burden the state, in addition to visas and pre-arranged foster parents to care for them. Back in England, Winton starts plugging away, with the help of his committee colleagues and his mother Babi, who was hard to say no to.

It is pretty mind-blowing Winton and his colleagues conducted this major fundraising campaign and logistical challenge using type-writers and regular mail service. However, the anti-Jewish hatred they encountered is depressingly commonplace in 2024. What would Winton think about his Labour Party’s persistent scandals involving antisemitism?

Screenwriters Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake go out of their way to point out Winton’s left-leaning politics. Yet, the film takes on a new sense of urgency post 10/7. (In a twist of fate, its UK debut came less than a week after Hamas's savage mass murders, abductions, and weaponized rapes.)

Whether or not you can push outside events out of your mind, Sir Anthony Hopkins is still a marvel as the late-1980s Winton. He portrays the righteous rescuer with deep sincerity and humility that is very moving. You might not pick Hopkins and Johnny Flynn out of a crowd and assume they were related, but he plays 1930s Winton with similarly keen earnestness. We quickly believe they are the same man, seen decades apart.

Nicky’s Family: The Father of the Kindertransport

As a proper British gentleman, Sir Nicholas Winton never boasted of his heroic efforts in the days leading up to World War II.  Fifty years after the fact, his beloved wife chanced upon a treasure trove of documents in their attic.  Much to his surprise, she was rather determined to make his story known to the world.  A BBC special later, the newly knighted Winton became known as the “British Schindler.”  Czech filmmakers Matej Mináč and Patrik Pašš reveal the full extent of Winton legacy in Nicky’s Family (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Alert and active at 104, Winton is clearly somewhat bemused by his new found celebrity.  Since his parents converted to Christianity, Winton is not officially recognized as a “Righteous Gentile,” but that hardly matters.  As a young man, Winton was a promising banker, poised to become one of his generation’s “Masters of the Universe.”  However, when a friend pulled out of a planned skiing vacation, Winton agreed to join him on a fact-finding trip to the Sudetenland-less Czechoslovakia.

More clear-sighted than many of England’s blue bloods, Winton was already alarmed by the rise of National Socialism.  Seeing the conditions in Czechoslovakia’s refugee camps only compounded his concerns.  He resolved to at least save as many children as possible launching what would become known as the Czech Kindertransport.  Winton’s fascinating story of intrigue, involving beautiful German spies and a less than indulgent boss, came to an abrupt end when Britain formally entered the war—until the BBC started tracking down survivors of the Kindertransport for their benign ambush.

When Winton comes face-to-face with the grown children of the Kindertransport, it is powerful real life drama.  It is also rewarding to hear how the survivors and their children and grandchildren have embraced humanitarian causes as a way to repay (or pay forward) Winton’s defiant compassion, at least up to a point.  However, director Mináč and his editor-co-writer-co-producer Pašš, rather overdo the feel-good call to service which ends their documentary.  After a while, the cavalcade of classrooms working to save the world becomes numbing. 

Still, the documentary’s undeniable strength is the story of Winton’s rescue operations, told through his on-camera recollections and dramatic recreations.  Gripping like an espionage thriller but also inspiring, these sequences really constitute the guts of the film.

Yes, many documentaries have addressed historically related subjects in recent years.  However, the presence of Winton and the participation of many of his “children,” such as rocket scientist Ben Abeles and Canadian journalist Joe Schlesinger, who serves as a supplemental narrator, sets Family apart from the field.  Just hearing from the centenarian Winton is sufficiently significant.  Recommended for students of history and parents ready to start teaching their children about the tragedies of WWII, Nicky’s Family opens this Friday (7/19) in New York at the Quad Cinema.