Some years are associated with tragedy and the horror of war. For example,1914: the year the lamps went out all over Europe (in the poignant words of Sir Edward Grey) at the start of the Great War; 1916: the year of the cataclysmic battle of the Somme. And in Wales 1966: the year of the tragedy of Aberfan.

Nicholas Winton and the Kindertransport

Over the past few days, I have been reflecting on another of those ill-starred years: 1939. Yesterday, we went to the cinema to see One Life, the brilliant film about the life of Sir Nicholas Winton, who played a key role in saving 669 children from the murderous Nazis in Czechoslovakia. He helped arrange for them to be brought to Britain in the spring and summer of 1939. Tragically, the very last Kindertransport train was halted on 1 September 1939 after Hitler invaded neighbouring Poland. The 250 children on board, so close to salvation, were seized by Nazi thugs, and only two survived the war.

The film is heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure. Heartbreaking because it highlights the agonies that so many people, especially the Jewish people of Europe, suffered at the hands of the Nazis, and because we are so aware that similar hatred is causing misery once more, especially in the Middle East and Ukraine. But heartwarming because good people like Nicky Winton, his mother Barbara, Doreen Warriner, Marie Schmolka, Martin Blake, Beatrice Wellington and Trevor Chadwick went to extraordinary lengths and (for those in Prague) considerable personal danger to save others. It was especially poignant to see the recreated scenes at Prague’s railway station as parents waved off their children, knowing they themselves would probably never see them again.

Winton’s story became famous in 1988 when the BBC television show That’s Life! reunited him with dozens of those he had saved. It is estimated that around 6,000 people are alive today (survivors and their children and grandchildren) as a result of the rescue mission he and his colleagues undertook in 1939. Anthony Hopkins gives a remarkable performance as Winton, bringing to life his fifty-year struggle to cope with the loss of those he was unable to save, followed by making peace with himself after meeting the survivors in the That’s Life! studio and in the years that followed.

My father’s evacuation from London

There’s another reason that I’ve been reflecting on the tragic year of 1939. Tidying the loft on New Year’s Eve I came across my late father Bob Skinner’s two school reports from that year.

The first was from Emanuel School in London, from the Lent term in 1939. It’s curious to think that his parents would have been reading this report at the very time that Nicholas Winton and his colleagues were desperately trying to secure the escape of Prague’s Jewish children.

One detail on the report struck me: the sticker with the remaining 1939 term dates, especially the provisional date for the start of the winter term: 18 September. Dad never rejoined Emanuel after a summer holiday in the Isle of Wight as war seemed inevitable. He was evacuated to stay with his aunty Flo (who I too loved as a child in the 1970s) in Moorland Road, Splott, Cardiff on Friday 1 September, the day Hitler invaded Poland and the last Kindertransport train was halted. Two days later he went round to his grandmother’s house nearby where he listened to prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s mournful yet moving broadcast announcing that “this country is at war with Germany”.

Dad later recalled his feelings on the day war broke out: “Everyone was apprehensive; no one knew what was in store for them, their families or for the country”. Yet he also recognised how fortunate he was to be with family, unlike other youngsters away from home for the first time, in remote areas totally alien to them. (Nina Bawden’s Carrie’s War novel about evacuees captures this very well, as does Lesley Parr’s more recent The Valley of Lost Secrets, which I blogged about in 2021.)

Dad continued his education at Cardiff High School for Boys, and alongside his Emanuel report I found one from his new school from that first wartime autumn. The following contrast between the two reports stood out:

His Emanuel headmaster described his performance as very good. He was in the top five of 29 pupils in five subjects. His Cardiff High grades were also good (intriguingly he took German at Cardiff High, as I was to do briefly at the by-then comprehensive Cardiff High in 1977), but his new teachers rated his performance as merely satisfactory.

Dad was one of 800,000 of children evacuated from London and other major cities in 1939. He was lucky in that he was staying with a much loved aunt and uncle rather than with strangers. But it must have been hard in those desperately worrying times to switch schools, away from friends, parents and siblings. He later wrote of the impact on his education of attending four different schools in four years. The war also deprived him of the chance of going to university.

Dad died in February 2023, the last of the pre-war generation in our family. Fortunately, he wrote extensively about his childhood and adult life, so we have a treasure trove of stories to help us understand how life was in those painful years.

PS: a much shorter version of my story about Dad’s report appeared in my letter in The Times today.

Postscript

I was delighted to receive from Emanuel School’s archivist, Tony Jones, a couple of contemporary mentions of my father in the school magazine, The Portcullis.

I was very moved to read this unexpected account of Dad’s sporting prowess 85 years on, and less than a year after he died. I am very grateful to Mr Jones for sharing these gems with me. He confirmed that the school’s records show that Dad moved to Cardiff High, and that Emanuel reopened to 140 boys from South London in 1943 before its full reopening at the end of the war in 1945. (It had been relocated to Petersfield in Hampshire on the outbreak of war in 1939.)

I also found these video stills from 2004, when I took Dad, then 77, on a tour of his childhood schools and homes in London. He enjoyed watching a game of cricket at his old school, and applauded some impressive drives. It was a special day for Dad, as he returned to Emanuel almost certainly for the first time since 1939.