Save One Life,Save the Worl

Stephen Bates

尼古拉斯·温顿爵士

It is not always true that the good die young. Sir Nicholas Winton,who has died aged 106, became known belatedly as “the British Schindler” for his part in rescuing more than 600 children in Czechoslovakia from the Nazis in the months before the outbreak of the Second World War.1. belatedly: 迟地；Schindler: 奥斯卡·辛德勒（1908—1974），是一位德意志大亨、德国间谍，纳粹党成员，于第二次世界大战期间开设搪瓷和弹药工厂，雇佣了许多犹太人作业，最终成功挽救了1,200名工人免遭德国纳粹的屠杀；Czechoslovakia: 捷克斯洛伐克；outbreak: 爆发。His was a good deed performed by stealth2. by stealth: 偷偷地，暗中。,and it was not generally known about for nearly 50 years until revealed on the BBC’sThat’s Life!TV programme.

Winton—who always rejected the idea that his actions were heroic—had approached the BBC to try to trace some of those he had helped bring to Britain in 1939.3. heroic: 英雄的；trace: 追踪，查探。He was moved to do so by the discovery by his wife, Grete, of a scrapbook in which he had inscribed the names, addresses and birthdates, together with photographs, of the children at the time of their rescue.4. 促成他这样做的是他妻子格蕾特的发现 —— 一本剪贴簿，他在上面记下了当时他营救的孩子的姓名、地址、出生日期，还附有照片。scrapbook: 剪贴簿；inscribe: 写。The book had lain untouched at the family home in Maidenhead5. Maidenhead: 梅登黑德，是一个位于英国伯克郡的镇和非教区地，地处泰晤士河南岸。for many years.

尼古拉斯·温顿爵士被誉为“英国辛德勒”，他曾在二战爆发前的九个月中，从纳粹手里救出了669名犹太儿童。2009年9月1日，那些被救助过的“温顿的孩子们”沿着当年的路线到达英国，拜见了恩人，而他已是100岁高龄，“孩子们”亦是两鬓斑白。2014年10月，105岁高龄的他在布拉格城堡被捷克总统授予了最高荣誉奖章——白狮勋章。2015年7月1日，尼古拉斯·温顿爵士去世了，享年106岁，但是他的故事和精神却将一直延续，感动并鼓舞着每一个人。

When the programme was broadcast in 1988, Winton found himself sitting in the front row of the audience. Unbeknown to him he was surrounded in the audience by the adults whose lives he had saved—their whereabouts having been traced by the programme’s researchers.6. unbeknown: 不知情的； whereabouts:下落，去向。On a command from7. on a command from: 在……的指令下。the show’s presenter Esther Rantzen—“Stand up if you owe your life to Nicholas Winton!”—they all did so. The emotionally reserved Winton found himself embraced by the survivors and struggled to maintain his composure, tears welling behind his spectacles.8. emotionally reserved: 情绪上克制的；composure: 镇静；well: v. 流出，涌出；spectacles: 眼镜。

His actions as a 30-year-old stockbroker had finally been recognised as he approached his 80s, and he was subsequently honoured by the Czech Republic, receiving in 2014 its highest award, the Order of the White Lion.9. stockbroker: 股票经纪人；subsequently:随后；Czech Republic: 捷克共和国；Order of the White Lion: 白狮勋章，是捷克共和国最高荣誉勋章，order意为“勋位，勋章”。Having been appointed MBE for other charitable services,he was knighted in 2003.10. MBE: 即Member (of the Order) of the British Empire，英帝国勋章获得者；charitable service: 慈善服务；knight: v. 授予爵位。

Winton came from a wealthy Anglo-Bavarian Jewish family that had emigrated to England in the 19th century.11. Anglo-Bavarian: 盎格鲁-巴伐利亚；Jewish: 犹太的；emigrate: 移居外国。By the time he was born, to Rudolph and Barbara Wertheim—the surname was anglicised only in 1938—the family had converted to Christianity.12. anglicise: 使……英国化；convert to: 皈依；Christianity: 基督教。He was one of the first pupils to be educated at newly founded Stowe school in Buckinghamshire.13. pupil: 学生；Stowe school: 英国斯多中学；Buckinghamshire: 英国白金汉郡。After leaving he joined a bank and then, in 1931,became a stockbroker.

年轻时期的尼古拉斯·温顿和他救助的孩子

尼古拉斯·温顿爵士被授予白狮勋章

In December 1938 he received a call from his friend, Martin Blake,a schoolmaster, asking him to cancel their planned skiing trip to Switzerland that Christmas and urging him to meet him in Prague instead.14. schoolmaster: 校长；skiing: 滑雪；Switzerland: 瑞士；Prague: 布拉格，捷克首都。Winton arrived on New Year’s Eve and was introduced by Blake to the organisers of the recently formed British Committee for Refugees15. refugee: 难民。from Czechoslovakia. The city was filling up with an estimated 250,000 people, many of them Jewish, who were fleeing Germany, Austria and the German-speaking Sudetenland,which the Nazis had annexed the previous October.16. flee: 逃离；Sudetenland: 苏台德区，位于捷克斯洛伐克西北部；annex: 并吞。Others were from political families and opponents17. opponent: 反对者，敌人。of the Nazis. Their living conditions in camps were pitiful and most were clamouring to get away.18. pitiful: 可怜的，令人同情的；clamour: 大嚷大叫。

Winton became determined to at least help the children of some of the families. He started taking names, and found his room at the Europa hotel in Wenceslas Square was besieged by families,queuing all day in the freezing cold to get their names on the list.19. 他开始记录名字，并发现他在瓦茨拉夫广场欧罗巴酒店的房间被众多家庭围堵，这些人成天在冰天雪地里排着队要列入名单。Wenceslas Square: 瓦茨拉夫广场，位于布拉格；besiege: 围攻；queue: 排队。Winton and his colleagues, Doreen Warriner, organiser of the committee, and Trevor Chadwick, took photographs and details of the children and began to organise their evacuation20. evacuation: 撤离。. The first flight of 20 left in January 1939, sponsored by an organisation called the Barbican Mission, whose intention was to convert them to Christianity. Winton, who was not personally religious, saw his priority over the coming months as helping to get the children out rather than converting them, but he would subsequently brusquely ask rabbis who lobbied him whether they would prefer the children to be dead or alive.21. 温顿本人并不信教，他认为在未来几个月他的首要任务是帮助孩子们出逃，而不是要让他们皈依，但他后来很粗鲁地问那些游说他的犹太教教士们，想让孩子们生存还是死亡。priority: 优先；subsequently: 后来；brusquely: 粗鲁地；rabbis: 拉比（犹太教教士）；lobby:v. 游说。

Winton went back to London after three weeks with a long list of children and, after his day’s work in the City, returned home to Hampstead each evening to organise permits and travel warrants for them to leave Prague and come to England.22. Hampstead: 汉普斯特德，是英国伦敦的一个区域，属于内伦敦卡姆登区的一部分，在20世纪上半叶又容纳了大批逃避俄国革命和纳粹的知识分子；permit: n.许可证；travel warrant: 旅行执照。It was not a straightforward matter: the British bureaucracy was complacent and slow, believing there was no urgency as war was deemed unlikely, and the government demanded bonds of 50—no small sum in those days—to sponsor the children.23. 这不是一件直截了当的事：英国的官僚机构又自满又低效，认定事态并不紧急、战争不会发生，政府还要求50磅的担保金来赞助这些孩子，这笔钱在当时可不算小数。straightforward:直截了当的；bureaucracy: 官僚机构；complacent: 自鸣得意的；deem: 认定；bond: 保证金；sponsor: 赞助。The arrangements were, nevertheless, better than those of countries such as the US and Australia, to whom Winton appealed in vain.24. appeal: 恳请，求助；in vain: 徒劳无功。“If America had only agreed to take them too, I could have saved at least 2,000 more,” he said.

Frustrated by the slowness of the British authorities, Winton made newspaper appeals and personally organised the children’s placements, with no time for checking suitability or haggling over who should go where.25.英国政府机构的低效令温顿深感挫败，于是他在报纸上呼吁求助，亲力亲为地安排孩子们的安置地点，无暇顾及是否适合或争论谁该去哪儿。placement: 安置；suitability: 适合性；haggle over: 争论。As the situation in Czechoslovakia grew more desperate following the German occupation of the entire country in March 1939, he took to forging the Home Office entry permits.26. occupation: 占领；take to: 开始从事；forge: 伪造；the Home Office: 内政部。That summer eight rail transports were conducted. A ninth Kindertransport, which was due to leave on 1 September 1939 with 250 more children, was cancelled by the Germans, and most of those who would have been on board were subsequently transported to concentration camps.27. Kindertransport: 即children’s transport，难民儿童运动，发生在二战爆发前的九个月里，英国从德国、奥地利、捷克斯洛伐克、波兰等国救出近一万个犹太儿童；concentration camp: 集中营。Nevertheless, Winton and his colleagues had saved at least 664 children: 561 of them Jewish, 52 Unitarians, 34 Catholics and 17 others.28. Unitarian: （基督教中不信仰圣父、圣子、圣灵三位一体的）上帝一位论派教徒；Catholic: 天主教徒。

Among the children were the future film director Karel Reisz and the Labour politician Alf Dubs. Most of them, sent across Europe alone or with their brothers and sisters, would never see their parents and relatives again. Virtually none had any idea at the time who was instrumental in saving them.29. virtually: 实质上； instrumental: 有帮助的，起作用的。

With the outbreak of war Winton put his scrapbook away and became an ambulance driver in Normandy, but was evacuated at Dunkirk and then joined the RAF.30. ambulance: 救护车；Normandy: 诺曼底，法国西北部一地区，北临英吉利海峡；Dunkirk: 敦刻尔克，是法国北部诺尔省的临海市镇，10公里之外便是法国与比利时边境；RAF: Royal Air Force，英国皇家空军。After the war he worked for a time for the International Committee for Refugees and took charge of selling Nazi booty31. booty: 战利品。to aid Jewish organisations. He later worked for the International Bank in Paris, distributing loans to the war-ravaged countries of Europe, and it was there that he met his Danish wife,32. war-ravaged: 受战争蹂躏的；Danish:丹麦的。who was a secretary at the bank. The couple had three children, one of whom died in childhood.

He was able to retire early and devoted himself to fundraising for Mencap and the Abbeyfield charity, which provides sheltered accommodation for elderly people:33. fundraising: 筹款；sheltered accommodation: 收容所。it was for this work that he was appointed MBE in 1983. It was not until five years later that his wife discovered the scrapbook and the family found out his story.

Winton, known to family and friends as Nicky, received many awards from the Czech authorities, including the freedom of Prague and the Order of Tomas Masaryk, presented to him by Vaclav Havel.34. the Order of Tomas Masaryk: 马萨里克勋章；Vaclav Havel: 瓦茨拉夫·哈维尔（1936—2011），捷克作家及剧作家，著名的持不同政见者，天鹅绒革命的思想家之一，在1993—2003年间担任捷克共和国总统。He was the subject of a Czech documentary35. documentary: 纪录片。,The Power of Good, in 2001, the year that his story,Nicholas Winton and the Rescued Generation—co-written by Vera Gissing,one of the children he saved—was published. He also received the freedom of Maidenhead, and a bronze statue36. bronze statue: 铜像。has been placed there on the railway station platform.

Vera Egermayer, a survivor of the Terezin camp37. Terezin camp: 特雷津集中营。, said: “Nicky is a national hero here in the Czech Republic. In England you don’t know about him but everywhere else we do. He did a kind act and never told anybody.” Winton himself insisted he was not a hero because he had never been in danger, merely “working from the safety of my home in Hampstead.”

He modestly insisted that it had been his colleague Chadwick,who had stayed in Prague to organise the evacuations, who had been the real hero, but in writing to Winton to award him the Order of the White Lion the Czech president, Milo Zeman, said: “You gave these children the greatest possible gift: the chance to live and be free.You did not think of yourself as a hero but you were conducted by a desire to help those who could not defend themselves, those who were vulnerable38. vulnerable: 脆弱的。. Your life is an example of humanity, selflessness,personal courage and modesty.”

Grete died in 1999. Winton is survived by39. be survived by sb.: 没有某人活得长。his children Nicholas and Barbara, and by two grandchildren.