Winton children honour their saviour

KENT BLECHYNDEN/The Dominion Post

FOREVER GRATEFUL: Ava Hayman, left, and Nora Huppert at last night's reunion to honour Sir Nicholas Winton, the man who rescued them.

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Holocaust survivors and their families have celebrated the heroic actions of the man to whom they owe their lives – and those of their children and grandchildren.

The families of five Jewish children, including three rescued from Czechoslovakia at the outbreak of World War II – before they could be taken to concentration camps – paid tribute last night to Sir Nicholas Winton.

He was a Briton who arranged for the rescue of 669 children to a new life in Britain in 1939, mostly by train.

Eighty-six-year-old Eva Hayman, now in Auckland, was taken to England as a 15-year-old, after Czechoslovakia was invaded.

She was accompanied by her 11-year-old sister, and said the journey was particularly harrowing.

"I was aware how absolutely dreadful it was for our parents to send their two daughters to people they didn't know, to a country that they didn't know.

"They didn't know if they'd ever see us again."

Neither sister saw their parents again but know their mother died during the occupation and suspect their father did too.

Mrs Hayman trained as a nurse in Poole, southern England, and attended to many victims of World War II bombing raids.

"The question I asked myself for a long time was why was I spared and others were not. And that was perhaps one of the reasons I went nursing, to justify my existence."

Mrs Hayman moved to Wellington in the 1950s with her two young children and doctor husband, who had a job at Silverstream Hospital.

She was now at peace with what had happened, though it had taken a long time to accept. "I didn't know it was the past that made me ... sad without having a reason."

Nora Huppert, 81, was reunited last night with Mrs Hayman, with whom she had made contact eight years ago when she heard she was a fellow Winton child.

There was "a litany" of people she felt gratitude towards for saving her young life. Sir Nicholas had started "a chain" of help, including the family who took her in and the friends she made.

Mrs Huppert met her saviour after she discovered she was a Winton child through concentration camp survivor Vera Egermayer, who organised last night's reunion and screening of a documentary detailing Sir Nicholas' feats, The Power of Good.

"It was one of the really ... mind-blowing, wonderful, almost unreal experiences," said Mrs Huppert.

"This is my rescuer ... I wouldn't be alive but for him, my children wouldn't exist and my grandchildren wouldn't exist."

- © Fairfax NZ News