Structured like a thriller, this documentary retraces a frantic race against time— nine fateful months in Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War. As the threat of German invasion tightens its grip, a 29-year-old British banker, Nicholas Winton, surrounded by a small group of volunteers, launches an extraordinary rescue operation to evacuate hundreds of children—most of them Jewish—who have taken refuge in Prague.
Eight trains reach Great Britain, saving the lives of 669 children who are taken in by British families. Some will go on to lead remarkable lives; most, however, will never see their parents again, victims of Nazi brutality.
On September 1, 1939, as France and Great Britain declare war on Hitler following the invasion of Poland, the operation comes to a brutal halt. Winton’s ninth convoy, carrying 250 children, never leaves the platform at Prague station. All but two will perish.
The man now known as the “British Schindler” would never recover from this loss—and would keep silent about his actions for fifty years.