http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nicholas-winton-saving-the-children-during-world-war-11-60-minutes/
You’ve heard about laughing out loud, well I was just crying out loud watching the short video above.
A British guy, now a knight, saved hundreds of Jewish kids on the eve of WW2 by getting them into England. Their parents couldn’t leave their home countries because no country would accept refugees, but many desperate parents managed to get their kids out. This British stockbroker forged travel documents and bribed officials, whatever he had to do, to get London to accept the children. America was asked to take some Jewish refugee children, but the embassy said no. If only the USA had said yes, we could’ve saved hundreds, maybe thousands more, he now says. Yeah, the guy is still alive — at 105 years old. You should watch the video.
I broke out in tears about 3 quarters of the way thru when the old man who saved all the kids is sitting in a crowded London theater. You have to watch the video to see why I was sobbing out loud, I am not spoiling the awesome-ness of it!
Oh yeah, I also cried-out-loud when a man spoke about remembering his parents putting him and his brother on one of the rescue trains. His parents lied and said we will join you in England in a few months. He went back to Czechoslovakia after the war — a teenager — to search for them (in vain). He went from camp to camp, watched footage, looked for records. Then he moved to Israel in his 20’s probably hoping maybe they would go there, if there is any place to “accidentally run into them” it might be in Israel. He says at the end of the video, “I never gave up looking…” and I bawled again.
But the most of my tears were generated when the old man was sitting in that crowded theater. I am tearing up just thinking about it again. Geez. Happy tears, really. Make sure you watch the thing!
We need such heroism today to save other children on the verge of extinction, for example the Boko Haram kidnapped girls, and the Yazidi girls kidnapped by ISIL. Two earliteen Yazidi girls, ages 14 and 13 escaped on their own this week after 2 months of sex slavery when the lock didn’t hold on their room. They had been sold to a sheik in his 40s and were used for “sport” by multiple men. The girls were plucky, and managed to get to Baghdad on foot somehow and are now back with their families way up north in the Yazidi refugee camps. Hundreds of Yazidi girls and women, maybe thousands, were sold into such slavery or are about to be. I only found out about the two escaped Yazidi girls by seeing a video on EuroNews. Not much is mentioned any more about the Boko Haram kidnapped girls in Africa, either. 200 are still missing, and those that escape tell of horrors.
If only people would or COULD sponsor refugee kids. There are no programs set up to do so. There are over 1.5 million of Syrian and Iraqi refugee KIDS right now stuck in Iraq and Syria. There are a bunch of children (and families) displaced hiding out in Kiev, Ukraine, but for now they are safe and don’t need to exit their home country.
Tens of thousands of the Syrian/Iraq refugee kids are Christian and Yazidi (Zoroastrian-AngelWorshipping-Noah’sArkDescendants) and many have at least one parent still alive. Wish the UN or some gov’t would set up programs to get them out and to new countries, especially the orphans. Nobody seems to care any more. Well, France took a couple hundred Iraqi Christians (in family groups) from the Biblical city of Ninevah (now called Mosul). France will probably take more. The few Yazidis living in Europe have started a program amongst themselves in which a family already living outside Iraq can sponsor a person or child that needs to escape, but it is so small and limited. There is a large group of Yazidis in Nebraska, I wonder if they are trying to get some of their people into the US.
Our Knights Templar group donates a portion of our dues to children victims of terrorism and war. We’ve been doing that for over a decade now. Last month we sent that money to UNICEF who was the first in Iraq to bring attention to the horrors on Mount Sinjar, and the many Christian and Yazidi child refugees fleeing for their lives from ISIL.
If anyone knows of other charities out there besides the UN, to help child refugees (or families), please comment below. The UN charities like UNICEF are great, but the UN isn’t able to help re-home these people. I guess no one is.