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The real story behind ‘One Life,’ the movie starring Anthony Hopkins as Nicholas Winton, who rescued Jewish children from the Nazis
(JTA) — In a 1988 episode of the British television show “That’s Life,” British stockbroker Nicholas Winton was invited to sit in the audience as host Esther Rantzen dramatically revealed to him that the entire crowd was composed of the Jewish children — now adults — he had saved during the Holocaust.
That tear-jerking clip periodically goes viral on social media, but now, Winton’s story is coming to bigger screens — in a dramatic film, “One Life,” where he is portrayed by two-time Academy Award-winning actor Anthony Hopkins.
Hopkins was the casting choice of Winton’s daughter, who died as it was being filmed, seven years after her father. Already, the movie has ignited criticism — and swift revision — over promotional materials that did not include language about the children’s Jewish identities. The full story about the film’s subject is even more complex, with connections to Ghislaine Maxwell, a gold ring, the Talmud and of course the tragic saga of European Jewry.
Winton’s role in that saga was hardly assured. Born to German-Jewish parents in London in 1909, Winton (originally “Wertheim”) was baptized into the Anglican Church, and as an adult, never subscribed to any religion.
Sir Nicholas Winton stands in front of the Tornado steam train that brought evacuees in 1939 to Liverpool Street railway station on September 4, 2009 in London, England. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
At 29, he was a stockbroker planning to ski in Switzerland with friends when his travel partner, schoolteacher Martin Blake called and said the trip was off — he was heading to Prague instead.
“I have a most interesting assignment and I need your help,” Winton recalled Blake saying. “Come as soon as you can. And don’t bother bringing your skis.”
Blake was working with the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, an organization established to save Jews and other minority groups targeted by the Nazis in the recently-annexed Sudetenland.
But it was the appeal of a Czech Jewish social worker and activist, Marie Schmolka, that ultimately brought Winton into the Czech Kindertransport-inspired project organized by British university lecturer Doreen Warriner. Schmolka, who is not often mentioned in accounts of Winton’s efforts and is not portrayed in the movie, had visited the areas where refugees were concentrated and collected evidence to garner public support, pleading to foreign ambassadors based in Prague and to Jewish agencies abroad, hoping someone would take them in. But Britain would only take unaccompanied children.
For the first three weeks of Jan. 1939, Winton mostly worked out of a hotel in Prague, coordinating and collecting applications from parents seeking homes for their children outside of Czechoslovakia. He also took photographs of the children, which he later said was more persuasive for prospective families than a mere list of names.
Back in Britain, still working his job at the stock exchange, Winton and his assistants and his mother fundraised, collected or forged the children’s travel documents, and also placed advertisements in newspapers to find them foster homes.
On March 14, 1939, the day before Nazi Germany invaded the Czech regions of Bohemia and Moravia, the first of eight trains containing 699 children, mostly Jewish, headed to Britain. A ninth train was scheduled to depart on Sept. 3, but was halted — Germany had invaded Poland two days earlier, officially starting the war, and the borders were closed. None of the approximately 250 children on that train are known to have survived.
Early in the war, he worked for the Red Cross as an ambulance driver in France and in England during the London Blitz, later joining the Royal Air Force training pilots and documenting the destruction he saw with his photography. In the years after the war, he joined the International Refugee Organization, working on the repatriation of Nazi-looted goods.
His work with the children went unnoticed for decades. Then, in the late 1980s, Winton’s wife Grete Gjelstrup discovered a scrapbook in the attic with the children’s names and photos, as well as letters written by their parents.
“I suppose there are quite a number of things that husbands don’t tell their wives,” Winton told Matej Minac, who directed several films about his story.
Gjelstrup brought the book to Holocaust historian Elizabeth Maxwell, the wife of media magnate Robert Maxwell (also the parents of Ghislaine Maxwell, sentenced to prison over her role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex abuse ring) who brought Winton’s story of saving the hundreds of children to the press, and eventually, to “That’s Life!” where he met some of the children he saved.
Nicholas Winton, then 105, receives the Order of White Lion, the highest order of the Czech Republic, from Czech President Milos Zeman during the Independence Day at Prague Castle, Oct. 28, 2014. (Matej Divizna/Getty Images)
Winton was nicknamed “the British Schindler” after German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who saved some 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. More than 6,000 children and grandchildren of the Czech Kindertransport owe their lives to Nicholas Winton, according to “One Life,” the 2014 book written by his daughter and biographer, Barbara Winton, which inspired the film. (The book was originally called “If It’s Not Impossible.”) Some of their descendants appear as extras in the “That’s Life!” scene.
Upon giving permission for a film adaptation of her book, Barbara Winton made one request of the project: cast Hopkins as her father.
Barbara Winton gave the filmmakers access to her father’s letters and other archival materials.
She died in September 2022, while “One Life” was still filming.
“One Life” is a reference to a paraphrased quote from the Mishnah: “Save one life, save the world,” which was inscribed in a gold ring presented to Winton in 1988 at a Holocaust conference organized by Elizabeth Maxwell at Oxford by some of the children he saved. Winton wore the ring for the rest of his life.
The gold ring presented to Nicholas Winton, inscribed with the phrase, “Save one life, save the world.” (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for BFI)
The quote is also referenced in the 1993 Steven Spielberg film “Schindler’s List” in a scene where, at the end of the war, the Jews Schindler saved give him a gold ring made from their dental fillings inscribed with a nearly identical quote as a parting gift. The real ring, according to Jozef Gross, the jeweler who created it, did not have an inscription.
Controversy arose in early January when the film’s promotional materials in the United Kingdom failed to mention that the majority of the children in danger were Jewish. Instead, some marketing materials referred to the children as “Central European.”
After social media backlash, IMDb, the Warner Bros. U.K. website, and British theater chain Vue have all changed their summary of the film to read “predominantly Jewish.”
The National Portrait Gallery in London, which was running a series of portraits of children saved by Winton as an accompaniment to the film, also changed the text in its description.
“Our Gallery’s curatorial team made this update to the website copy to better reflect the identity of the individuals who traveled on the Kindertransport,” a representative from the National Portrait Gallery wrote in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The original copy assumed that this was implicit, given the nature of the digital exhibition, however, following feedback, we felt it was important to clarify this.”
Helena Bonham Carter attends a photo call for “One Life,” out in January 2024, at The Rosewood Hotel on Nov. 30, 2023 in London. (Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Warner Bros)
The film has another Jewish angle to it as well — actress Helena Bonham Carter, who is of Jewish descent, plays Winton’s mother, Babette Wertheim.
“It was in my DNA to play this role because I come from Austrian Jewish heritage,” Bonham Carter told the Jewish News of London. “And on top of that, on both sides, both my grandparents helped a lot of Jewish people with visas to get out of Nazi Europe.”
Bonham Carter called Winton a hero, and said the most important part of the film was to make sense of him, “what made this man, this exceptional man, so modest, do the most extraordinary things,” she said.
Nicholas Winton died in 2015 at the age of 106.
Despite going decades without recognition for his heroism during the war, the later years of his life were filled with honors and awards. Winton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 for his efforts during the war, and he received the Order of the White Lion, the highest order from the Czech Republic in 2014. He even had a minor planet named after him.
Still, he insisted for years that his work was not heroic.
“I was never in any danger,” Winton told a British newspaper in 2011. “I took on a big task, but did it from the safety of my home in Hampstead.”
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Columbia University Releases Campus Antisemitism Climate Survey
Pro-Hamas protesters at Columbia University on April 19, 2024. Photo: Melissa Bender via Reuters Connect
Columbia University’s Task Force on Antisemitism has released a “campus climate” survey which found that Jewish students remain exceedingly uncomfortable attending the institution.
According to the survey, 53 percent of Jewish students said they have been subjected to discrimination because of being Jewish, while another 53 percent reported that their friendships are “strained” because of how overwhelmingly anti-Zionist the student culture is. Meanwhile, 29 percent of Jewish students said they have “lost close friends,” and 59 percent, nearly two-thirds, of Jewish students sensed that they would be better off by electing to “conform their political beliefs” to those of their classmates.
Nearly 62 percent of Jewish students reported “a low feeling of acceptance at Columbia on the basis of their religious identity, and 50 percent said that the pro-Hamas encampments which capped off the 2023-2024 academic year had an “impact” on their daily routines.
Jewish students at Columbia were more likely than their peers to report these negative feelings and experiences, followed by Muslim students.
“As a proud alumna who has spent decades championing this institution, I found the results of this survey difficult to read,” acting Columbia University president Claire Shipman said in a statement. “They put the challenges we face in stark relief. The increase in horrific antisemitic violence in the US and across the globe in recent weeks and months serves as a constant, brutal reminder of the dangers of anti-Jewish bigotry, underscores the urgency with which all concerned citizens need to act in addressing it head-on, and the fact that antisemitism can and should be addressed as a unique form of hatred.”
Shipman added that university officials are “aware of the extent of the immense challenges faced by our Jewish students” and have enacted new policies which strengthen the process for reporting bias and prevent unauthorized demonstrations which upend the campus.
“I am confident we can change this painful dynamic. I know this because we share a commitment to protect all members of our community. We owe it to our students — and to each other,” she said.
Columbia University recently settled a lawsuit brought by a Jewish student at the School of Social Work (CSSW) who accused faculty of unrelenting antisemitic bullying and harassment.
According to court documents, Mackenzie “Macky” Forrest was abused by the faculty, one of whom callously denied her accommodations for sabbath observance and then held out the possibility of her attending class virtually during pro-Hamas protests, which according to several reports and first-hand accounts, made the campus unsafe for Jewish students. Her Jewishness and requests for arrangements which would allow her to complete her assignments created what the Lawfare Project described as a “pretext” for targeting Forrest and conspiring to expel her from the program, a plan that involved fabricating stories with the aim of smearing her as insubordinate.
Spurious accusations were allegedly made by one professor, Andre Ivanoff, who was the first to tell Forrest that her sabbath observance was a “problem.” Ivanoff implied that she had failed to meet standards of “behavioral performance” while administrators spread rumors that she had declined to take on key assignments, according to court documents. This snowballed into a threat: Forrest was allegedly told that she could either take an “F” in a field placement course or drop out, the only action that would prevent sullying her transcript with her failing grade.
Forrest left but has now settled the lawsuit she filed to get justice in terms that Columbia University has buried under a confidentiality agreement.
Columbia was one of the most hostile campuses for Jews employed by or enrolled in an institution of higher education. After Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the university produced several indelible examples of campus antisemitism, including a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
Amid these incidents, the university struggled to contain the anti-Zionist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which in late January committed an act of infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete. Numerous reports indicate the attack may have been the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, the Free Beacon reported, ADP distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts. Additionally, a presentation was given in which complete instructions for the exact kind of attack which struck Columbia were shared with students.
The university is reportedly restructuring itself to comply with conditions for restoring $400 million in federal funding canceled by US Education Secretary Linda McMahon in March to punish the school’s alleged failure to quell “antisemitic violence and harassment.”
In March, the university issued a memo announcing that it acceded to key demands put forth by the Trump administration as prerequisites for releasing the funds — including a review of undergraduate admissions practices that allegedly discriminate against qualified Jewish applicants, the enforcement of an “anti-mask” policy that protesters have violated to avoid being identified by law enforcement, and enhancements to the university’s security protocols that would facilitate the restoration of order when the campus is disturbed by pro-Hamas radicals and other agitators.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Columbia University Releases Campus Antisemitism Climate Survey first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Consulate Officials Targeted in Boston With Flyers as Antisemitic Crime Wave Continues
A vigil for Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, both Israeli embassy staffers who were murdered by an anti-Israel activist, in Washington DC on May 22, 2025. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Anti-Israel activists in Boston targeted Israeli consulate staff this week by distributing a threatening flyer which included their pictures and names, potentially endangering them amid a recent surge in antisemitic violence across the US.
“They spread war into Syria, Lebanon, and now Iran,” the flyer said, according to multiple reports. “The people pictured above and other staff at the consulate work for the Israeli government. They advocate for laws to censor us. Their education initiatives obscure and cover up their crimes. Their economic missions fund genocide.”
It added, “Don’t work with them. Don’t help them. Tell them to leave Boston.”
The Consulate General of Israel to New England on Wednesday acknowledged the severity of the incident, noting that its connection to recent events is not lost on anyone.
“The consulate immediately notified local law enforcement agencies and is grateful for their swift response and continued cooperation, as well as their commitment to deepening security efforts around this matter,” it said in a statement. “This deplorable act is especially concerning in light of recent horrific incidents where anti-Israel incitement has escalated into antisemitism, hate crimes, and acts of violence and terror, including right here in our region.”
Only last month, two Israeli diplomats, Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26 — a couple about to become engaged — were murdered as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum for young professionals and diplomatic staff hosted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC). Elias Rodriguez, a 31-year-old left-wing and anti-Israel activist from Chicago, was later charged in US federal court with murdering the embassy aides. According to witnesses and federal agents, he chanted, “Free, Free Palestine” — a war cry that has been a staple of the pro-Hamas movement.
An affidavit filed by federal authorities in support of the criminal complaint charging Rodriguez revealed that he also said at the scene of the shooting, “I did it for Palestine; I did it for Gaza.”
Less than two weeks later, an assailant firebombed a pro-Israel rally with Molotov cocktails and a “makeshift” flamethrower in Boulder, Colorado, injuring 15 people ranging in age from 25 to 88. Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, was charged with attempted murder and a slate of other crimes. Prosecutors say he yelled “Free Palestine” during the attack. The suspect also told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people,” according to court documents.
In Boston this week, one of the targeted officials, Consul General Benjamin Sharoni, issued a statement, saying that the flyer “is bullying, it is an intimidation, and a call to hostile action.” Meanwhile, the New England office of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said “it is deeply troubling in the current climate, where anti-Israel incitement has directly led to the brutal murder of two Israeli embassy staff members.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the American Jewish community has been battered by antisemitic hate incidents throughout the country, forcing law enforcement to stay hot on the trails of those who perpetrate them amid a wave of recent outrages.
On Tuesday, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland announced that it has charged Florida native Jackson Traylor, 26, with sending baleful antisemitic messages which alluded to Nazism and the Holocaust. If convicted of the crimes, he could spend up to two years in federal prison.
“Go burn in an oven like your ancestors,” Traylor allegedly texted his victim. “Burn in a god damn oven … Stupid Jew … Hey, Jew, been a while since we spoke. Let me burn you alive like your ancestors Hail Hitler.”
Earlier this month, an antisemitic letter threatening violence was mailed to a resident of the Highland Park suburb in Chicago. So severe were its contents that the FBI and the Illinois Terrorism and Intelligence Center were called to the scene to establish that there was no imminent danger, according to local news outlets. Later, the local government shuttered all religious institutions as a precautionary measure.
In New York City, where antisemitic hate crimes have been increasing year over year and leading the nation in the statistical category, an elderly man struck a Jewish woman with his cane after shouting “Stupid b—tch. Go back to your country” — as reported by the New York Post. He became even more animated after the helpless woman, who was alone on a subway platform, began recording the encounter with her smartphone. The New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) Crimestoppers division has asked the public to come forward if they recognize the man, whose visage was captured in crystal clear screenshots pulled from footage of the attack.
Another antisemitic incident motivated by anti-Zionism occurred in San Francisco, where an assailant identified by law enforcement as Juan Diaz-Rivas and others allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and his friends approached the victim while shouting “F—ck the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to local prosecutors.
Chilling data released by the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) latest Audit of Antisemitic Incidents in April revealed that antisemitism in the US is surging to break “all previous annual records.”
In 2024 alone, the ADL recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents last year — an average of 25.6 a day — across the US, an eruption of hatred not recorded in the nearly thirty years since the organization began tracking such data in 1979. Incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault all increased by double digits, and for the first time ever a majority of outrages — 58 percent — were related to the existence of Israel as the world’s only Jewish state.
The Algemeiner parsed the ADL data, finding dramatic rises in incidents on college campuses, which saw the largest growth in 2024. The 1,694 incidents tallied by the ADL amounted to an 84 percent increase over the previous year. Additionally, antisemites were emboldened to commit more offenses in public in 2024 than they did in 2023, perpetrating 19 percent more attacks on Jewish people, pro-Israel demonstrators, and businesses perceived as being Jewish-owned or affiliated with Jews.
“This horrifying level of antisemitism should never be accepted and yet, as our data shows, it has become a persistent and grim reality for American Jewish communities,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Jewish Americans continue to be harassed, assaulted, and targeted for who they are on a daily basis and everywhere they go. But let’s be clear: we will remain proud of our Jewish culture, religion, and identities, and we will not be intimidated by bigots.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Israeli Consulate Officials Targeted in Boston With Flyers as Antisemitic Crime Wave Continues first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Jewish Lawmaker Says He Was ‘Run Off the Road’ by Pro-Palestinian Activist
US Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) says in a video posted to social media that a pro-Palestinian activist ran him off the road. Photo: Screenshot
US Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) posted a video on X/Twitter on Friday morning saying that he was physically threatened by a pro-Palestinian activist.
Miller, who is Jewish, alleged that while driving to work, the activist forced his car off the road to show him a Palestinian flag and called for the destruction of the Jewish state. Miller added that the assailant threatened the lives of himself and his family.
“This morning, as I was driving to work, some unhinged, deranged man decided to lay on his horn and run me off the road when he couldn’t get my attention. Not to mention, ‘death to Israel,’ ‘death to me,’ that he wanted to kill me and my family,” Miller said.
The representative claimed that he obtained the identity of the suspect and that he will be pursuing legal action against him.
The deranged hatred in this country has gotten out of control. Today I was run off the road in Rocky River, and the life of me and my family was threatened by a person who proceeded to show a Palestinian flag before taking off. I have filed a police report with Capitol Police and… pic.twitter.com/H6JnupcRIA
— Max Miller (@MaxMillerOH) June 19, 2025
Miller, who represents the 7th Congressional District of Ohio, has positioned himself as one of Congress’s most outspoken pro‑Israel advocates. Since taking office in January 2023, he has sponsored multiple resolutions in support of Israel, including a July 2023 measure declaring it “not a racist or apartheid state.” He also co‑sponsored the Antisemitism Awareness Act, aligning US education policy with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.
Miller has also been a vocal supporter of substantial US aid to Israel, backing the $26 billion supplemental package in 2024 that he helped guide through the House, and has denounced any Republican measures that tied Israel aid to US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cuts as “disgusting.” His stance extends to public commentary, where he has condemned Palestinian flag displays by Democrats and framed constraints on Israel’s military response to Iran and its terrorist proxy network as misguided.
In the aftermath of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, pro-Palestinian activists have engaged in a great deal of violence in Ohio. According to Anti‑Defamation League (ADL) reporting, the Buckeye State has experienced a near-quadrupling of antisemitic hate crime cases — from 61 in 2022 to 237 in 2023. Notable incidents include vandalism at Ohio State University‘s Hillel Center, swastika carvings on trees in New Albany, and reported assaults on Jewish students. These incidents have prompted new state legislation to define antisemitism under the IHRA framework and expand ethnic-intimidation charges.
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