Winton's Children - Benjamin Abeles

"If it is not impossible, there must be a way to do it." - Sir Nicholas Winton In 1939, Sir Nicholas Winton organised a rescue operation in which he managed to save 669 Czech children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. One of the children rescued was Benjamin Bedřich Abeles (1925 - 2020). American physicist whose research on germanium-silicon alloys in the 1960s in the United States led to the development of the technology used as a source of electricity for the Voyager spacecraft. He grew up in Austria and Czechoslovakia. In July 1939, at the age of 14, he was one of several hundred Jewish children transported from Prague to London thanks to the humanitarian efforts of Nicholas Winton, who helped these children survive the Holocaust. At the age of 15 he worked as a waiter and studied English, mathematics, physics and chemistry by correspondence. At the age of 18, he served as a ground mechanic with the 311th Bombardment Squadron of the British Air Force (RAF). After the Second World War, he was educated in Czechoslovakia and Israel, where he received a doctorate in physics. He then lived and worked as a research physicist in the United States until his retirement in 1995. For his contributions to science, Stuart received the Ballantine Medal and was inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991. Winton's children In the nine months before the outbreak of the Second World War, 669 children, mostly of Jewish origin, were transported from Czechoslovakia to Great Britain and other countries. This was almost entirely due to the foresight and energy of a small group of people, organised by 29-year-old stockbroker Nicky Winton - later known as Sir Nicholas. But few people know what the fate of these children was. Who took them in after their arrival in England? What did they do? What schools did they go to? What contact did they have with their families who remained in Czechoslovakia? How did their lives develop and what role did survival play in them, but also uprooting from the arms of the family? Sir Nicholas Winton (1909 - 2015) Approximately 6,000 people owe their lives to Nicholas Winton. They are the descendants of a group of refugee children he rescued from the Nazi threat in 1939. It was a brief event in his life, but a crucial one for those whose lives he saved. What was his motivation? How did his life and past lead him to be ready, willing and able, at the age of 29, to successfully arrange the transfer of 669 mostly Jewish children from the occupied territory of Czechoslovakia to save them from transport to concentration camps by arranging for their departure by train to the United Kingdom?