The incredible story of how Nicholas Winton – who was later dubbed "Britain's Schindler" – saved hundreds of children from the Holocaust, is being told in a new film. Exclusive BBC clips show the moment when Winton met some of the children he rescued.
In February 1988, Vera Gissing sat with tears in her eyes in the BBC TV studio as she was introduced to Nicholas Winton, the man who had saved her life.
Overcome with emotion, she clasped his hand and embraced the then nearly 80-year-old man, who had organised her escape from Nazi-occupied Prague just months before the outbreak of World War Two.
Forty-nine years earlier, a 10-year-old Vera, born Věra Diamantová, along with her 15-year-old sister, Eva, had been packed onto a train called a "Kindertransport" with hundreds of other Jewish children, to take them to Britain.
"I shall never forget the waving goodbye to my parents, and suddenly feeling very afraid because I caught the expression of fear on my parents' tear-stained faces. There were German soldiers all around us," she recalled.
Vera would never see either of her parents again. Of the relatives she left behind that day, all but three would die in the Holocaust. She was just one of hundreds of children Winton saved from the same fate.
The remarkable story of what Winton did is told in the film One Life, starring Anthony Hopkins. The film takes its title from a saying in the Talmud, the book of Jewish law, "whoever saves one life saves the world entire".
The wider world might never have known of his extraordinary humanitarian efforts had his wife not discovered a suitcase in the attic of their home in Maidenhead, England. It contained a scrapbook that detailed the names and photographs of the children he had helped escape.
Winton was the son of German Jewish parents, who had anglicised their name, and baptised him into the Anglican church in an effort to integrate into British life.
Although he was a stockbroker by profession, Winton was also a committed socialist with an interest in international affairs. And by 1938, through his own family contacts, he was keenly aware of the danger facing Jewish families in Nazi-occupied territories.
At the urging of his friend and fellow socialist Martin Blake, he travelled to Prague to help refugees fleeing persecution in the build-up to World War Two.
In History
In History is a series which uses the BBC's unique audio and video archive to explore historical events that still resonate today.
When he arrived, he was horrified by what he saw. The city was rapidly filling up with people trying to escape the Nazis, many of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland, a part of........