Winton train arrives in London
Updated on 04 September 2009
A steam train recreating the journey of hundreds of child evacuees, rescued from the Nazis by a man dubbed Britain's Oscar Schindler, arrives at Liverpool Street Station.
Seventy years after Sir Nicholas Winton organised for 669 Jewish children to travel from Prague to London to escape concentration camps, some of the survivors retrace their journey.
Sir Nicholas, who celebrated his 100th birthday in May, will be at Liverpool Street Station to see the steam train arrive.
The train left Prague on Tuesday, 1 September, with 22 passengers who were originally transported as children.
Sir Nicholas organised the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from then Czecholsovakia in the run-up to World War II.
He started organising the trains carrying the children to London after visiting refugee camps outside Prague, all the while maintaining his day job at the Stock Exchange. It was only 50 years later that that the children, now grown up, found out who organised the trains.
The last of eight trains was due to leave on the day war broke out. On 1 September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and all the borders were closed. None of the 250 children on board the last train or their families were every heard from again.
Sir Nicholas has said many times that the vision that haunts him most is the families waiting at Liverpool Street for the train that never arrived.
