Updated

Updated · bbc.co.uk · Sep 30

Esther Rantzen Surprised Nicholas Winton With 669 Child Rescue Reunion on 1988 TV

Updated

Updated · bbc.co.uk · Sep 30

Esther Rantzen Surprised Nicholas Winton With 669 Child Rescue Reunion on 1988 TV

Q: Why did Esther Rantzen stop filming in tears during Nicholas Winton’s 1988 BBC surprise reunion with the children he saved?

Esther Rantzen stopped filming because the live reunion was overwhelmingly emotional for her. She said seeing Nicholas Winton discover that two women sitting beside him, Vera Gissing and Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines, were among the children he had saved was “incredibly moving,” and she broke down in tears. Rantzen had already been deeply affected by Winton’s wartime story and especially by his belief that he had “not saved enough.” She later said she was “devastated” that he felt he had failed, because she wanted him to understand that every child he rescued mattered. That emotional weight came together in the 1988 That’s Life! broadcast, when Winton’s rescue work was revealed on air through his scrapbook and the identities of survivors were disclosed to him live. Rantzen said it was the only time in her television career that she had to stop recording to wipe away her tears. The moment became even more significant because the programme later led more survivors and families to come forward, culminating in the famous follow-up scene in which much of the studio audience stood up to show they owed their lives to Winton. But the reason she halted filming in that first reunion was simple: the human impact of seeing Winton face the lives he had saved was too powerful for her to continue without pausing.

3 articles · Updated · bbc.co.uk · Sep 30

A 1988 episode of BBC One's That's Life! brought Nicholas Winton face to face with children he had saved, after Esther Rantzen invited him on without revealing the surprise.
Winton had organized the rescue of 669 mainly Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939, but told Rantzen he felt he had failed because "not enough" people were saved.
Two survivors, Vera Gissing and Milena Grenfell-Baines, first identified themselves beside him on air; in a later episode, more people who owed their lives to him stood up across the studio.
The moment helped turn Winton's little-known wartime work into national news nearly 50 years later, after his wife found a scrapbook that enabled researchers to trace the children.
Rantzen said the footage still moves her, and estimated about 6,000 people ultimately owe their existence to Winton's rescue effort.