Latest / From Chad / Rescuing #1189
Transcript
- 0:01If it's in your power to do good, do it.
- 0:05There's a story behind that. This is your daily message from
- 0:09Chandmer 1189 to upgrade your mental game today by telling
- 0:12yourself a better story. Because the most important story
- 0:15you hear is the story you tell yourself.
- 0:17This message is dedicated to one of the good ones, Bill Lesnar on
- 0:20his birthday. Here's the upgrade.
- 0:24You think a good deed has to be big enough to matter, but
- 0:27upgraded think he knows the size of the rescue is never the
- 0:29point. The decision was.
- 0:32Here's the story. It's December 1938.
- 0:36A 29 year old London stockbroker named Nicholas Winton cancels a
- 0:40skiing trip. His friend Martin Blake asks him
- 0:43to come to Prague to see the refugee crisis for himself.
- 0:47Winton goes He finds overcrowded camps full of Jewish families
- 0:51and other refugees desperate to get their children out before
- 0:53Nazi persecution closes in. He has no official mandate to
- 0:58run a rescue operation. He starts one anyway, though,
- 1:02first out of a hotel room in Prague and then off his mother's
- 1:05dining room table back in London with a small circle of
- 1:08volunteers. British rules require a host
- 1:11family and a £50 guarantee for every child, so he raises the
- 1:15money and finds the homes. When the official entry permits
- 1:19crawl in too slowly, he forges them.
- 1:23Between March and August of 1939, the operation gets 669
- 1:28children out of Czechoslovakia and into Britain.
- 1:32One transport by plane, seven more by train.
- 1:36A 9th transport carrying roughly 250 more children is due to
- 1:40leave on September the 1st. That's the morning Germany
- 1:44invades Poland and the war begins.
- 1:46Soldiers turn the children away at the station.
- 1:49Most are believed to have died in the Holocaust.
- 1:52Winton comes home and says almost nothing.
- 1:55For decades, the rescue stays largely unknown, even to his own
- 1:59wife, Greta, until she finds a scrapbook of names and
- 2:02photographs in their attic in 1988.
- 2:05As the Talmud says, whoever saves one life saves the entire
- 2:09world. Winton and the people who worked
- 2:12with him saved 669 worlds and never once brought it up.
- 2:18That same year, the scrapbook leads to ABBC show called That's
- 2:23Life. Beside him in the audience sits
- 2:26Vera, one of the children he helped bring to safety.
- 2:30Later, the host asks the room, Does anyone here tonight owe
- 2:33their life to Nicholas Winton? More than two dozen people stand
- 2:38up around the man who thought he'd only ever filed some
- 2:41paperwork. The better story to tell
- 2:44yourself is I have the power to do good today.
- 2:48You probably won't get a train or 600 children or a room that
- 2:52stands up for you. There's a smaller version of
- 2:55this setting in your day right now, waiting for you to notice
- 2:58it. If it's in your power to do
- 3:01good, do it. Tell me a story of Quiet Rescued
- 3:06from chadsmith@gmail.com. Send someone a text and tell
- 3:10them thank you for the good you do.
- 3:13You can get a free copy of my book, The Most Powerful Story in
- 3:15the World, by going to from chad.gumroad.com.
- 3:19The transcript of this message and hundreds of others are
- 3:21always available at www.fromchad.com.