Winton's Children - Otto Pick

"If it's not impossible, there must be a way to do it." Sir Nicholas Winton. In 1939, Sir Nicholas Winton organised a rescue operation during which he managed to save 669 Czech children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Otto Pick (1925 - 2016) was also one of the rescued children. He graduated from a comprehensive school in Prague and continued his studies at the English Grammar School. Thanks to Sir Nicholas Winton's transport, he came to Great Britain at the age of 14, where he received a scholarship to Oxford University after finishing high school. In 1943, however, he joined the Czechoslovak army in England and as a signalman and radio operator took part in the Normandy landings. After the Second World War he returned to Prague, but in 1948 he and his friends fled to Germany to escape the communist regime. He returned to the UK where, after studying history at Oxford, he worked as an editor for the BBC. An eternal student, as he described himself, he later studied at the London School of Economics, where he soon began teaching as an assistant, eventually moving to the newly built University of Surrey in Guildford as Dean and Vice-Chancellor. Here he also received a professorship. From 1983 he lived in Munich, where he worked as director of the Czechoslovak broadcast of Radio Free Europe. In 1991 he returned to Czechoslovakia. From 1994 to 1998 he headed the Institute of International Relations, and in the late 1990s he was the first deputy to Foreign Minister Jan Kavan. Later he also served as ambassador with a special mission, focusing on Czech-German and Czech-Austrian relations. He lectured at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University and the Diplomatic Academy, and was a member of the board of the Czech-German Future Fund. Winton's children In the nine months before the outbreak of the Second World War, 669 children, mostly of Jewish origin, were transported from Czechoslovakia to Great Britain and other countries. This was almost entirely due to the foresight and energy of a small group of people, organised by 29-year-old stockbroker Nicky Winton - later known as Sir Nicholas. But few people know what the fate of these children was. Who took them in after their arrival in England? What did they do? What schools did they go to? What contact did they have with their families who remained in Czechoslovakia? How did their lives develop and what role did survival play in them, but also uprooting from the arms of the family?