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Series Code: TIJ
Program Code: TIJ002103A
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00:28 Prague is considered one of the most beautiful cities in Europe 00:31 It's the capital of the Czech republic and the historical 00:35 capital of Bohemia. Situated on the Vltava River it's known as 00:40 the city of a hundred spires, the golden city and a fairytale 00:46 town. Prague's descriptive nick names embody its beauty with 00:51 ancient bridges, baroque palaces, gothic cathedrals, 00:55 cobblestone lanes and the largest castle complex in the 01:00 world. Prague is simply and stunningly beautiful. But 01:05 there's a dark spot, a terrible stain on this beautiful city. 01:11 On the outskirts of Prague is the Terezin concentration camp. 01:18 It was established by the Nazi S.S. during World War II. Tens 01:22 of thousands of people died here Some were killed outright. 01:26 Others died from malnutrition and disease. More than 150,000 01:33 others including tens of thousands of children were held 01:37 here for months and years before being sent by rail 01:42 transports to their deaths at Treblinka and Auschwitz 01:44 extermination camps in occupied Poland. Even now decades later 01:51 we're all appalled at the evil of the holocaust, It seems hardly 01:56 a year or two goes by without a new book, a new movie, dealing 02:01 with the holocaust. It's as if we are still trying to come to 02:05 comes to grips with it. For instance Rudolph Hoess had been 02:09 the commandant at the most infamous of all Nazi death camps 02:12 Even after the war when interviewed he was asked how 02:18 many people were murdered there under his watch and then just 02:23 like a businessman talking about how many bags of potato chips 02:27 were sold in a certain time frame, he responded: 02:39 How do you grasp such evil? I don't think we can and yet at 02:45 the same time amid all the evil we can find amazing stories of 02:51 good. That is, some people just can't sit by and do nothing 02:56 while something so bad unfolds around them. And one of these 03:01 people was Sir Nicholas Winton, a British business man who 03:06 interrupted a ski vacation in order to take on himself an 03:11 incredible task. In today's program, Save One Life, Save the 03:16 World we're going to look at this amazing story and see what 03:20 it can teach us about the reality of good and evil 03:23 and right and 03:25 wrong. Stay tuned for an Incredible Journey. 03:30 ♪ ♪ 04:00 One of the most dynamic and cosmopolitan cities in Europe 04:04 today is Berlin, Germany. It's the capital city of the German 04:08 nation. It has six million residents and is growing rapidly 04:14 Of course, no visit to Berlin is complete without seeing the 04:17 Brandenburg Gate. It had been built in 1770s and is the only 04:23 surviving city gate from the old days in Berlin. It had been 04:27 damaged in World War II but today is a symbol of the great 04:32 unification of Germany in the 1990s. And near the Brandenburg 04:38 Gate is perhaps the most emotional site in Berlin. It's 04:43 the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. Yes, right in 04:47 Berlin in what had been the heart of the Nazi machine is a 04:52 memorial to the holocaust. It consists of 2711 concrete slabs 04:59 designed in a way to bring confusion and unease among those 05:03 who walk through them symbolic of the holocaust while at the 05:07 same time giving the sensation of a graveyard. Certainly two of 05:13 fitting symbols for the genocide And there's another site one 05:18 should see in Berlin, a house. The address is Grofzen Wannsee 05:23 56-58 Berlin. What's so special about this house? Well it was 05:31 right here in 1942 that a group of Nazi leaders met and over 05:36 coffee and tea and cakes planned out the holocaust. To this day 05:44 new stories come out about the holocaust. It's still hard to 05:49 get our minds around such unrelenting evil, such unsparing 05:54 cruelty and perpetrated so coldly and calculatedly. What a 05:58 powerful testament, I think, to the Biblical doctrine of human 06:03 sinfulness. Perhaps, too, what is so hard to grasp is that for 06:09 the Nazis all you had to be was Jewish. That alone was a death 06:14 sentence which meant that children any age were murdered 06:18 as well. It's been estimated that one and a half million 06:22 children, mostly Jewish children but others as well had been 06:28 killed by the Nazi regime. One and a half million! How can we 06:32 comprehend this? Do we even want to? But you know amid all the 06:39 barbarity and cruelty there are also some amazing stories of 06:43 heroism, of kindness, of self sacrifice. And yes, even in the 06:48 inferno of the holocaust there were those who worked tirelessly 06:53 to try and save people from what the Nazis had prepared for them. 06:57 And one of them was an Englishman, Nicolas Winton. 07:00 He's credited with saving the lives of 669 children who 07:07 otherwise could have been among those were murdered at Auschwitz 07:10 No wonder Nicholas Winton has been called the British Oscar 07:17 Schindler. Now Oscar Schindler had been a German industrialist 07:20 who saved many Jews during the holocaust. His story became well 07:25 known after the award-winning moving by Steven Spielberg 07:30 called Schindler's List. For this story though we come to 07:37 England to Nicholas George Winton. He was born here in 07:40 Hampstead London in 1909 to a German immigrant family. His 07:45 father was a bank manager and young Winton himself went into 07:49 banking. He worked in banks not only England but also in Germany 07:54 and France. He eventually returned to England and became a 07:59 stock broker at the London Stock Exchange near St. Paul's 08:02 Cathedral in the heart of London At this point Nicholas Winton 08:08 was living a pretty good life. In fact in December of 1938 when 08:13 he was 29 years old the young stock broker was preparing for 08:17 a two-week ski vacation in Switzerland. He was looking 08:21 forward to having a good time just relaxing and enjoying a 08:26 holiday in the mountains. But then something happened. One of 08:31 those moments when all of a sudden your life takes a radical 08:36 turn, when instantly everything changes. For Nicolas Winton this 08:42 happened just before his ski vacation. A friend had called 08:47 him from Prague, Czechoslovakia. He said to Winton I have a most 08:52 interesting assignment and I need your help. He then added 08:57 the following line too: 09:04 Winton, listening to his friend, left his skis at home and came 09:07 to Prague. Yes, today Prague is a thriving and growing city, 09:13 a great place to live and work and visit. But in December 1938 09:19 things were very different here, very different. Just a few 09:24 months earlier there was the ill-fated Munich agreement 09:27 between Germany and the West. This left Nazi Germany free to 09:33 take over a large part of western Czechoslovakia. Winton 09:37 and others were convinced that this though was only the 09:42 beginning. They feared what was to become reality, a war in 09:47 Europe with the Nazis taking over the whole country. 09:50 Meanwhile news had already reached around the world about 09:54 the infamous Kristallnacht, German for the night of broken 10:00 glass. It was a massive attack all around Germany on Jews and 10:06 businesses and though there was a certain amount of outrage from 10:10 the world nothing happened. Many argued that the lack of action 10:14 against Germany for its attack on Jews convinced Hitler that 10:19 he could indeed exterminate them all. No question. When Winton 10:24 got to Prague he was convinced that war was coming and his 10:29 friend had asked him to come in order to help work with refugees 10:33 who were suffering in refugee camps in the country. These were 10:37 people who had fled the Nazis in the west. And yes, many of them 10:42 were Jews. Jews who would face extermination if not given help. 10:48 Here is Nicolas in his own words: 11:38 This indeed was a situation that set Nicolas Winton on a course 11:43 that made him a hero to so many. He decided that he had to try 11:49 and do something to save at least these children from what 11:53 would be certain death. It was here in Wenceslaus Square in the 11:59 heart of Prague that Winton began his work. He set up a 12:03 small office in this hotel. The hotel is today called the Grand 12:08 Hotel Europa. The office was actually only a dining room 12:13 table in his room. Yet many anxious parents came here 12:17 worried about the fate of their children, hoping that this man 12:21 could save, if not their whole family, then at least their 12:27 children. At one point, hearing about a woman who was 12:30 interested in taking Jewish children to Sweden, he and a 12:34 female colleague met her for lunch in a restaurant. When 12:38 Nicolas began to tell her about his plans his colleague gave him 12:43 a swift kick under the table. Why? She suspected, and it 12:49 turned out correctly, that the woman was a spy working for the 12:53 Germans. But then Nicolas Winton ran into another problem. 12:59 Remember he was supposed to be on a two week holiday in 13:04 Switzerland. When the two weeks were close to running out, he 13:08 wrote to his boss asking for another week to set things up 13:10 as best he could while still in Prague. His boss told him no. He 13:15 was needed back at the office. Well Winton took the week 13:20 anyway, not sure what would happen when he returned home. 13:24 Before leaving after the extra week in Prague he managed to 13:30 get 20 children ages three to 11 years old on a flight to 13:35 England. This was the first of the transports to England. One 13:39 of the most well-known pictures of Nicolas, Winton was when 13:43 Winton at the airport in Prague was holding a small boy Hansi 13:49 Begh about to be flown to safety Winton came back to England. 13:54 Fortunately, he didn't get fired and resumed his job back at the 13:59 stock exchange. But while maybe working there by day in his 14:04 spare time he worked tirelessly to get children transported out 14:08 of Czechoslovakia. He had to find families that would take 14:14 the children and 50 pounds for each child had to be paid to the 14:17 government, the equivalent of about 2500 pounds today. He 14:23 quickly created his own organization called The British 14:28 Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, Children's 14:32 Section. The group consisted of himself, his mother, his 14:37 secretary and a few volunteers. He worked nonstop seeking to 14:42 raise money and find homes for each child. He knew that once 14:47 the war started it would be next to impossible to get them out. 14:51 In some ways perhaps his biggest obstacle was with the British 14:56 bureaucracy and all the red tape and required documents. One time 15:01 he went to the home office and urged them to hurry up with the 15:05 entry visas. One chap chided him saying What's the rush old 15:10 boy? Nothing will happen in Europe. Well the war started 15:14 just a few months later. Frustrated and committing a 15:19 crime that could have gotten him a lengthy jail term Nicolas 15:24 Winton simply forged the documents needed to get those 15:27 children out. And so from his start when he first got to 15:32 Prague in late 1938 until August 1939 Nicolas Winton managed to 15:38 get 669 children out of Czechoslovakia and into England. 15:44 Most, if not all, would have ended up in a concentration camp 15:48 and been murdered otherwise. Many left on trains from the 15:53 main train station in Prague, the same station that would 15:58 later be used to transport other Jews to the gas chambers. By 16:03 train the children reached the English channel. Then by boat 16:07 they got to England where by another train they rode to the 16:11 Liverpool Street Station. There they met their new parents and 16:16 began a new life. One of the most heartbreaking parts of the 16:21 story began on September the 1st 1939. It was the day that the 16:26 biggest transport of children was to take place. Here 250 16:33 children waited for the train to take them to England. But that 16:36 day Hitler invaded Poland. World War II started and the borders 16:42 were all closed. The train left the station that day but with 16:46 none of the children on board. 17:13 Every child on that train perished. They were among the 17:18 more than 15,000 Czech children who were murdered in Nazi 17:22 concentration camps, mainly Auschwitz and Treblinka. And 17:32 well, that was that. Nicolas Winton eventually got married 17:35 moved the town of Maidenhead near London and 17:38 raised his family. His whole rescue effort just kind of 17:43 vanished from memory. His wife, who he had married just a few 17:48 years after these events didn't even know about what he had done 17:54 That is until almost 45 years later. In 1988, she found in the 18:00 attic of their house a scrap book. In it were the names of 18:04 many of the children he had saved, the names of their 18:07 parents and the names and addresses of the people who took 18:11 them in. She showed the book to the book to the wife of media 18:14 mogul Robert Maxwell. Later that year in 1988 during an episode 18:20 of the BBC program That's Life, the story was broadcast. Then 18:26 with Nicolas Winton in the audience the host of the program 18:29 Esther Ransom asked if anyone in the audience owed their life 18:35 to Nicolas Winton. If so, she said, please stand. Dozens of 18:40 people rose to their feet and applauded. His story soon became 18:45 international news. Over the years Nicolas Winton received 18:50 numerous awards by both the British and Czech governments. 18:54 He was even knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2003 for his heroic 19:01 work. Here is the Central Prague railway station is this memorial 19:06 established in 2009. It says it all. It shows Winton 19:13 compassionately caring for two young children as they prepared 19:16 to leave their heartbroken families and catch the train to 19:21 England. Now let's think for a moment about what Nicolas Winton 19:25 did. Yes, it was wonderful wasn't it? He gave a lot of 19:29 himself to help others who couldn't help themselves. That 19:34 was very commendable. We can all agree on that. But let me ask 19:38 you this simple question. Wouldn't any one of us have done 19:44 the same thing or something similar if put in the same 19:47 situation? That is if you had the chance to rescue people from 19:52 something as terrible as this wouldn't most of us want to do 19:55 it if we could? Of course. But why? Well let me explain what 20:05 I'm getting at. You know, we live today in what is being 20:09 deemed the postmodern era. It's the idea that moral values are 20:15 relative, subjective. Indeed, there have been a lot of very 20:21 smart people, intelligent philosophers and the like who've 20:25 made this claim. For them morality is kind of like music. 20:31 It's a purely human creation. Jazz, rock, classical it doesn't 20:37 matter. We as humans, we alone create it. But others think that 20:43 no this can't be right. Morality is instead like sunshine. It's 20:50 something that comes down upon us from above. So morality is 20:56 either like music or like sunshine. Which is right? Now 21:03 let's go back to World War II and let's imagine, just imagine, 21:06 that the Germans had in fact won the war. Imagine that they 21:12 succeeded in defeating not only the Russians, the British and 21:16 the Americans but eventually everyone else as well and the 21:22 Nazis reigned as the ruler of the entire world. And suppose 21:27 that under the genius propaganda of Nazi minister Joseph Goebbels 21:32 the Nazis were able to persuade the whole world that anyone with 21:37 one Jewish grandparent was indeed worthy of death. That is 21:43 it was a moral duty to make sure that these Jews, even the 21:48 children, were killed. And again everyone believe that yes it 21:53 was their moral duty to kill any Jew, any age, anywhere they 21:58 found one. Would it not be the right thing, the moral thing, to 22:04 do? Well, how could it not be? I mean, if morality were, as we 22:11 said, like music, purely a human creation and all human beings 22:16 believed that the murder of the Jews was the moral thing to do 22:19 then, well, how could it not be the moral thing to do? Now my 22:25 guess is that the vast majority of people would not be 22:29 comfortable with this conclusion But I humbly ask why not? If 22:35 morality was purely a human creation, purely like music, 22:39 then how could whatever everyone says is moral not be 22:44 moral? Well like many people I think that the reason we're 22:49 uncomfortable with that conclusion is that morality is 22:53 not like music either. No, it's more like the sunshine. That is, 22:58 there are some moral truths, some moral principles that 23:03 transcend human ideas, that are greater than our own views and 23:08 opinions. And among those principles is that you don't 23:12 kill men, women and children, people simply because of their 23:17 race or religion. Isn't that right? In fact some people use 23:21 this as an argument for the existence of God. If there are 23:26 certain moral realities, certain moral truths, that transcend 23:30 humanity that come to us from above, where else could they 23:35 come from but God? It's a kind of higher morality. 23:40 This is called 23:41 even the moral argument for the existence of God. In the Bible, 23:47 there is what many believe to be a written transcript of this 23:51 higher morality. It's called the 10 commandments and I believe 23:58 that if people were to really read and study them they would 24:02 find an incredibly powerful and relevant tool for making life 24:06 so much better now. If people simply followed two of the 24:10 commandments alone against theft and against murder think about 24:15 how much better our world would be right now. And add the other 24:20 eight commandments and you've got the very best guide on how 24:23 to live and be truly happy. You know life is kind of like a 24:28 journey isn't it? And along the way we have choices to make. 24:33 And sometimes it's not always easy to know what choices to 24:37 make either, is it? But I like the story of Nicolas Winton 24:42 because he was a man who when faced with a choice chose to do 24:47 what was right simply because it was right. And I believe that 24:53 the rightness of his act was indeed rooted in a higher 24:57 morality, a morality that came from above like the sunshine, in 25:02 fact higher than the sunshine. This is a morality that comes 25:07 from God, the God who revealed himself in the person of Jesus 25:13 Christ, the God who is willing to accept you right now 25:16 even if per 25:18 chance you've not always made the right decision, if indeed 25:22 there's really nothing heroic about you at all. So if you'd 25:26 like to experience God's acceptance and his unconditional 25:31 love why not ask for it right now as we pray? 25:34 Dear Heavenly Father, we live in a tough world. There's lots of 25:41 evil around us and it's not always easy to know how to react 25:45 to it or how to even avoid partaking of it ourselves. Help 25:50 us to know what is right and what is true and even more 25:54 importantly help to know how to do what is right and what is 25:59 true. May we always look up to you and your word for guidance. 26:05 In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. 26:09 Making decisions can be difficult. It's not always easy 26:14 to know right from wrong and sometimes we wish we could get a 26:19 bit of divine guidance, don't we Well I'd like to recommend a 26:24 free gift we have for all our viewers today. It's a popular 26:29 booklet, Your Moral Compass, Right or Wrong. You'll find it 26:33 most helpful in guiding you regarding how to make right 26:38 moral choices. So please don't miss this wonderful opportunity 26:42 to receive the gift we have for you today. Here's the 26:45 information you need: Phone or text us at 0436333555 in 26:54 Australia or 0204222042 in New Zealand or visit our website 27:03 www.tij.tv to request today's free offer and we'll send it to 27:10 you totally free of charge and with no obligation. Write to 27:15 us at: 27:33 Don't delay. Call or text us now Be sure to join us again next 27:40 week when we will share another of life's journeys together. 27:45 Until then remember the ultimate destination of life's journey. 27:49 Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth. And God will wipe away 27:54 every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death nor 27:57 sorrow nor crying. There shall be no more pain. For the former 28:02 things have passed away. 28:04 ♪ ♪ |
Revised 2021-02-11