Winton Children Farewell Memorial

In 2017, Prague’s main station unveiled a touching memorial dedicated to British humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton, who had passed two years prior.

On the eve of World War II, Winton arranged eight trains to help a total of 669 Jewish children escape Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, an operation now known as the Czech Kindertransport. His accomplishments remained unrecognized until the BBC program That’s Life! reunited him with the children whom he saved, as well as their children and grandchildren in 1988.

Dubbed the “British Schindler,” Winton went on to be knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 and awarded the Order of the White Lion, the highest honor of Czcheia in 2014. He died of cardiac arrest at the age of 106 in July 2015, which coincided with the date that 241 of the 669 children left Prague on a train in 1939.

The Farewell Memorial at Prague Main Station is designed to be a replica of the 1939 train door, with the hands of children on one side and those of their parents on the other, representing their final goodbye. It serves as an expression of thanks from the children to their parents, most of whom did not survive the Holocaust.