Captain William D. Swenson distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and
intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty
while serving as embedded advisor to the Afghan National Border Police,
Task Force Phoenix, Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan in
support of 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat
Team, 10th Mountain Division, during combat operations against an armed
enemy in Kunar Province, Afghanistan on September 8, 2009.
On that
morning, more than 60 well-armed, well-positioned enemy fighters
ambushed Captain Swenson's combat team as it moved on foot into the
village of Ganjgal for a meeting with village elders. As the enemy
unleashed a barrage of rocket-propelled grenade, mortar and machine gun
fire, Captain Swenson immediately returned fire and coordinated and
directed the response of his Afghan Border Police, while simultaneously
calling in suppressive artillery fire and aviation support.
After the
enemy effectively flanked Coalition Forces, Captain Swenson repeatedly
called for smoke to cover the withdrawal of the forward elements.
Surrounded on three sides by enemy forces inflicting effective and
accurate fire, Captain Swenson coordinated air assets, indirect fire
support and medical evacuation
helicopter support to allow for the evacuation of the wounded. Captain
Swenson ignored enemy radio transmissions demanding surrender and
maneuvered uncovered to render medical aid to a wounded fellow soldier.
Captain Swenson stopped administering aid long enough to throw a
grenade at approaching enemy forces, before assisting with moving the
soldier for air
evacuation. With complete disregard for his own safety, Captain Swenson
unhesitatingly led a team in an unarmored vehicle into the kill zone,
exposing himself to enemy fire on at least two occasions, to recover the
wounded and search for four missing comrades. After using aviation
support to mark locations of fallen and wounded comrades, it became
clear that ground recovery of the fallen was required due to heavy enemy
fire on helicopter landing zones.
Captain Swenson’s team returned to
the kill zone another time in a Humvee. Captain Swenson voluntarily
exited the vehicle, exposing himself to enemy fire, to locate and
recover three fallen Marines and one fallen Navy corpsman. His
exceptional leadership and stout resistance against the enemy during six
hours of continuous fighting rallied his teammates and effectively
disrupted the enemy's assault.
Captain William D. Swenson's
extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and beyond the call of duty
are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and
reflect great credit upon himself, Task Force Phoenix, 1st Battalion,
32nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division
and the United States Army.
In December 1938, Nicholas Winton, a 29-year-old London stockbroker,
was about to leave for a skiing holiday in Switzerland, when he received
a phone call from his friend Martin Blake asking him to cancel his
holiday and immediately come to Prague: "I have a most interesting
assignment and I need your help. Don't bother bringing your skis."
When Winton arrived, he was asked to help in the camps, in which
thousands of refugees were living in appalling conditions.
MUNICH AGREEMENT
The Munich Conference was held September 29-30, 1938, following
Hitler's demand to annex the Sudetenland, a region in Czechoslovakia
populated largely by ethnic Germans. The resulting crisis led Britain and
France, who had adopted a policy of appeasement, to pressure Czechoslovakia
to accede to Hitler's demands. No Czech representative was present at the
conference, and the agreement led to the destruction of the Czech state.
Following the conference, Winston Churchill warned: "Do not
suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning."
In October 1938, after the ill-fated Munich Agreement between Germany
and the Western European powers, the Nazis annexed a large part of
western Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland. Winton was convinced
that the German occupation of the rest of the country would soon follow.
To him and many others, the outbreak of war seemed inevitable. The news
of Kristallnacht, the bloody pogrom (violent attack) against
German and Austrian Jews on the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938, had
reached Prague. Winton decided to take steps.
"I found out that the children of refugees
and other groups of people who were enemies of Hitler weren't being looked
after. I decided to try to get permits to Britain for them. I found out
that the conditions which were laid down for bringing in a child were
chiefly that you had a family that was willing and able to look after
the child, and £50, which was quite a large sum of money in those days,
that was to be deposited at the Home Office. The situation was heartbreaking.
Many of the refugees hadn't the price of a meal. Some of the mothers
tried desperately to get money to buy food for themselves and their
children. The parents desperately wanted at least to get their children
to safety when they couldn't manage to get visas for the whole family.
I began to realize what suffering there is when armies start to march."
In terms of his mission, Winton was not thinking in small numbers, but
of thousands of children. He was ready to start a mass evacuation.
"Everybody in Prague said, 'Look, there is no
organization in Prague to deal with refugee children, nobody will let
the children go on their own, but if you want to have a go, have a go.'
And I think there is nothing that can't be done if it is fundamentally
reasonable."
OPERATION KINDERTRANSPORT
On December 2, 1938, Jewish and Christian agencies began rescuing German and Austrian
Jewish children on Kindertransporten (children's transports).
The "Refugee Children's Movement," a group under the auspices
of the Central British Fund for German Jewry or CBF (which later became
the World Jewish Relief organization), urged concerned Christians
and Jews to support "Operation Kindertransport."
An extensive
fund-raising effort was organized and the British public
responded generously, raising half a million British pounds in six
months. A large portion of this money was used to care for the children
who were rescued. Between December 1938 and May 1940, almost 10,000
children (infants to teenagers) were rescued and given shelter at farms,
hostels, camps, and in private homes in Britain. However, this effort
did not include the children of Czechoslovakia; and this is why the
work of Nicholas Winton was so vital.
Independently of Operation Kindertransport (see sidebar),
Nicholas Winton set up his own rescue operation. At first, Winton's
office was a dining room table at his hotel in Wenceslas Square in Prague.
Anxious parents, who gradually came to understand the danger they and
their children were in, came to Winton and placed the future of their
children into his hands. Soon, an office was set up on Vorsilska Street,
under the charge of Trevor Chadwick.
Thousands of parents heard about
this unique endeavor and hundreds of them lined up in front of the new
office, drawing the attention of the Gestapo. Winton's
office distributed questionnaires and registered the children. Winton
appointed Trevor Chadwick and Bill Barazetti to look after the Prague
end when he returned to England. Many further requests for help
came from Slovakia, a region east of Prague.
Winton contacted the governments of nations he thought could take in
the children. Only Sweden and his own government said yes. Great
Britain promised to accept children under the age of 18 as long as he
found homes and guarantors who could deposit £50 for each child to
pay for their return home.
Because he wanted to save the lives of as many of the endangered children
as possible, Winton returned to London and planned the transport of
children to Great Britain. He worked at his regular job on the Stock
Exchange by day, and then devoted late afternoons and evenings to his
rescue efforts, often working far into the night. He made up an
organization, calling it "The British Committee for Refugees from
Czechoslovakia, Children's Section."
The committee consisted
of himself, his mother, his secretary and a few volunteers. Winton had to find funds to use for repatriation costs, and a
foster home for each child. He also had to raise money to pay for the
transports when the children's parents could not cover the costs. He
advertised in British newspapers, and in churches and synagogues. He
printed groups of children's photographs all over Britain. He felt
certain that seeing the children's photos would convince potential
sponsors and foster families to offer assistance. Finding sponsors was
only one of the endless problems in obtaining the necessary documents
from German and British authorities.
"Officials at the Home Office worked very slowly
with the entry visas. We went to them urgently asking for permits, only
to be told languidly, 'Why rush, old boy? Nothing will happen in
Europe.' This was a few months before the war broke out. So we
forged the Home Office entry permits."
On March 14, 1939, Winton had his first success: the first transport
of children left Prague for Britain by airplane. Winton managed to organize
seven more transports that departed from Prague's Wilson Railway Station.
The groups then crossed the English Channel by boat and finally ended their
journey at London's Liverpool Street station. At the station, British foster
parents waited to collect their charges. Winton, who organized their rescue,
was set on matching the right child to the right foster parents.
The last trainload of children left on August 2, 1939, bringing the
total of rescued children to 669. It is impossible to imagine the emotions
of parents sending their children to safety, knowing they may never be
reunited, and impossible to imagine the fears of the children leaving the
lives they knew and their loved ones for the unknown.
On September 1, 1939 the biggest transport of children was to take place,
but on that day Hitler invaded Poland, and all borders controlled by Germany
were closed. This put an end to Winton's rescue efforts. Winton has said
many times that the vision that haunts him most to this day is the picture
of hundreds of children waiting eagerly at Wilson Station in Prague for
that last aborted transport.
"Within hours of the announcement, the train
disappeared. None of the 250 children aboard was seen again. We had 250
families waiting at Liverpool Street that day in vain. If the train had
been a day earlier, it would have come through. Not a single one of those
children was heard of again, which is an awful feeling."
The significance of Winton's mission is verified by the fate of that
last trainload of children. Moreover, most of the parents and siblings
of the children Winton saved perished in the Holocaust. After the war, Nicholas Winton didn't tell anyone, not even his wife
Grete about his wartime rescue efforts. In 1988, a half century later,
Grete found a scrapbook from 1939 in their attic, with all the children's
photos, a complete list of names, a few letters from parents of the
children to Winton and other documents. She finally learned the whole
story.
Today the scrapbooks and other papers are held at Yad Vashem,
the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, in Israel. Grete shared the story with Dr. Elisabeth Maxwell, a Holocaust historian
and the wife of newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell. Robert Maxwell arranged for
his newspaper to publish articles on Winton's amazing deeds. Winton's
extraordinary story led to his appearance on Esther Rantzen's BBC television
program, That's Life. In the studio, emotions ran high as Winton's
"children" introduced themselves and expressed their gratitude to him
for saving their lives. Because the program was aired nationwide, many
of the rescued children also wrote to him and thanked him. Letters came
from all over the world, and new faces still appear at his door, introducing
themselves by names that match the documents from 1939.
The rescued children, many now grandparents, still refer to
themselves as "Winton's children." Among those saved are the British film
director Karel Reisz (The French Lieutenant's Woman, Isadora, and
Sweet Dreams), Canadian journalist and news correspondent for CBC,
Joe Schlesinger (originally from Slovakia), Lord Alfred Dubs (a former
Minister in the Blair Cabinet), Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines (a patron
of the arts whose father, Rudolf Fleischmann, saved Thomas Mann from
the Nazis), Dagmar Símová (a cousin of the former U.S. Secretary of State,
Madeleine Albright), Tom Schrecker, (a Reader's Digest manager), Hugo
Marom (a famous aviation consultant, and one of the founders of the
Israeli Air Force), and Vera Gissing (author of Pearls of
Childhood) and coauthor of Nicholas Winton and the Rescued Generation.
Winton has received many acknowledgements for his humanitarian pre-war
deeds. He received a letter of thanks from the late
Ezer Weizman, a former president of the State of Israel. He was made an
Honorary Citizen of Prague. In 1993, Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, awarded
him the MBE (Member of the British Empire), and on October 28, 1998,
Václav Havel, then president of the Czech Republic, awarded him the
Order of T.G. Masaryk at Hradcany Castle for his heroic achievement.
On December 31, 2002, Winton received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth
II for his services to humanity. Winton's story is also the subject
of two films by Czech filmmaker Matej Mináč: All My Loved Ones
and the award-winning Nicholas Winton: The Power of Good.
Today, Sir Nicholas Winton, age 97, resides at his home in Maidenhead,
Great Britain. He still wears a ring given to him by some of the
children he saved. It is inscribed with a line from the
Talmud, the book of Jewish law. It reads:
"Save one life, save the world."
