The Ski Trip That Saved 669 Lives

In December 1938, twenty-nine-year-old London stockbroker Nicholas Winton cancelled a skiing holiday in Switzerland. His friend Martin Blake had invited him to Prague instead, where thousands of Jewish families were fleeing the Nazi advance into the Sudetenland. Winton could have spent that winter on the slopes. No one would have blamed him.

What he found in Prague changed everything. Refugee camps overflowed with desperate parents who knew what was coming. Winton set up a makeshift office at his hotel dining table and began compiling lists of children, photographing their faces, and matching them with foster families back in Britain. He organized travel permits, raised funds, and navigated a wall of bureaucracy that seemed designed to discourage exactly what he was attempting. Between March and August 1939, Winton arranged eight trains carrying 669 children from Prague to London. A ninth train, scheduled for September 1, never departed — Germany invaded Poland that day.

Proverbs 24:11-12 leaves no room for comfortable ignorance: "Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, 'But we knew nothing about this,' does not He who weighs the heart perceive it?"

Winton saw the need and acted. He could have looked away. Most people did. The call of Scripture is not merely to feel compassion but to move — to cancel the ski trip, set up the table, and do the work that rescue demands.