“If something is not impossible there must be a way of doing it” was the motto a man named Nicholas Winton worked by.

If you don’t know who Nicholas Winton is, you ought to. We all ought to because Nicholas Winton was a real life hero. Nicholas Winton was 29 years old in 1938, working in London as a successful stock broker when he heard the news of families being displaced in Czechoslovakia due to the war. That didn’t sit well with Nicholas so he took his two weeks of vacation away from his job and traveled to Prague to the refugee camps to look for ways he could help. The parents in these camps realized that with war coming they themselves couldn’t get out of the country, but they begged Nicholas to get their children out of the country to safety as fast as possible for them. Nicholas then gathered the names of hundreds of children whose parents had asked him for help and he put these names on a list that he took back to London. He then setup his own organization and he convinced the British government to allow him to bring these children into the country, with the caveat that he needed to first find families in Britain that were willing to take these children in. So began finding families to take them in. In 1939 he got the first group of kids out. Over the next few months Nicholas managed to get 669 children safely out of Prague and away from the Nazis. Nicholas Winton had literally saved those children’s lives by rescuing them from the Holocaust.

After the war Nicholas went back to his former life, he got married and had a family. He never told anyone what he had done during the war. In fact it wasn’t until 50 years later when his wife was cleaning out their attic that she came across an old scrapbook in their attic. It was a scrapbook Winton had made with the list of all the children he had saved. Nicholas finally told his wife what had happened. In 1988 the BBC learned about the scrapbook and they invited Nicholas to attend a live taping of a TV program. During the program they surprised Mr. Winton as you will see in this incredibly inspiring short video below:

Those 669 children Winton saved have now turned into over 15,000 children through the posterity of those original 669 kids.

Nicholas Winton was the best kind of hero. He learned of a problem, he found a solution, he worked tirelessly and selflessly to do something good…but never once was he doing it for the fanfare or accolades…he did it because he felt it was the right thing to do and he was willing to give it his best effort.

I am so inspired by this man’s life and his story. And I love that when stated the opening quote he said the motto he worked by…not just lived by…but he was wiling to work by…was “If something is not impossible there must be a way of doing it”.  Truly a great man.

~Amy Rees Anderson