Prague, Sep 1 (DPA) A steam train left Prague Tuesday on a four-day journey to London in honour of Sir Nicholas Winton, a Briton who saved hundreds of Jewish children from deportation to Nazi concentration camps.
Winton, who turned 100 in May, saved 669 Jewish children from former Czechoslovakia on the eve of the World War II. He arranged to bring them to Britain by train and place them in foster families.

The Winton Train, as it is known, retraces the journey that had saved the children’s lives seven decades ago.

“We did not cry. I was a brave girl,” said Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines, who was nine when she boarded the life-saving train with her four-year-old sister and a 30-month-old cousin.

She recalled that the train left at night as a noisy crowd bid farewell to the children on a steam-covered platform. “It was an adventure for us. We had no idea what would happen to us,” she said.

The three girls were looked after by a British family, which in order to take care of them sent their own daughter to live with relatives.

Winton, then a 30-year-old stockbroker, organised eight trips by the time war broke out Sep 1, 1939. The last one, planned for early September of that year, never left as war began.

Still active, Winton plans to meet the passengers when the train arrives in London Friday. He is to welcome 27 of the rescued children on the platform, just like in 1939.

“He drove me in his car five weeks ago. He is 100 years old and he still drives,” said Grenfell-Baines, who sees Winton often.

Winton had kept quiet about his mission for half a century. His role was revealed in the late 1980s after his wife found a scrapbook about the rescue operation while cleaning the attic of their home.

In 2006, Czech schoolchildren organised a petition, so far signed by more than 75,000 people, proposing the Nobel Peace Prize for Winton.

Meanwhile, passengers in the train cars steaming towards London have been overcome with emotion, trading memories, Grenfell-Baines said.

“Winton saved our lives and it would not have happened without that train,” she said.