The Story Of Two Rohingya Children

Of the nearly 3,100 Rohingya and Bangladeshis that have landed in three Southeast Asian countries, Margie Mason of Associated Press reported of two very young children who had no choice but to fend for themselves.

It was just the two of them, brother and sister, out on the open ocean with hundreds of other desperate migrants, mostly Rohingya Muslims fleeing their homes in Myanmar. For nearly three months, the siblings comforted each other when rolling waves thrashed their boat, when their empty bellies ached and when they were beaten for trying to stand up to stretch their legs.

As the oldest, Mohammad Aesop - just 10 years old - knew it was his job to keep his 8-year-old sister safe. But with the Thai crew wielding guns and threatening to throw troublemakers overboard, he felt helpless.

Theirs was the first boat to wash ashore in Indonesia two weeks ago, followed by a number of other wooden trawlers crammed with hungry, dehydrated people. Many were abandoned at sea by their captains following a regional crackdown on human trafficking networks.

Mohammad and his sister, Untas Begum, lost their mother more than three years ago, when sectarian violence in Myanmar's troubled state of Rakhine reached its peak. She was killed by a machete during an attack at a market in the state capital, Sittwe. Her children were taken in by a relative, who struggled to care for them with little money for food.

Their father has been living in Muslim-majority Malaysia, one of the few places where Rohingya can find menial jobs and a semblance of acceptance. He decided it was time for his children to join him, and paid a broker in March to put them on a boat in the Bay of Bengal.

The siblings were forced to sit with their knees bent so that another person could be seated in between their legs - like human dominos stacked together as closely as possible to ensure the biggest payoff from ransoms of around US$ 2,000 per person demanded from the migrants' families after they left Myanmar's territorial waters.

To sleep, they simply leaned back into the chest of the person behind them. When their legs shook and ached from being locked in one position for so long, they were beaten for moving or trying to stand.

The heat on the boat was oppressive, and the stench of sweat and soured vomit was nauseating. They were given only a few spoonfuls of rice gruel twice a day. Fever, diarrhea and dehydration were common among the children and adults, but no medicine was provided. Untas said she once shivered while burning hot and freezing at the same time.

"We were given a little food and water, and we were on the sea for a long time," she said, sipping water casually though a straw, a precious commodity that such a short time ago was rationed to keep her alive during the journey. "We didn't have our mom or dad on the boat, so we were scared."

Fear and desperation have driven smugglers to flee their vessels following recent arrests and the discovery of dozens of mass graves in Thailand and Malaysia where migrants were held in the jungle before the floating camps were set up offshore. Mohammad said one night a smaller boat approached, and as the captain and crew left, they pointed guns at the people on the larger vessel and told them that anyone who tried to follow would be killed.

"He shot twice into the air. Everyone started screaming and crying," Mohammad said, adding that he threw his sister across his lap to try to shield her with his tiny body. "I thought they would kill all of us."

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Viking Treasure Found In Norway

In ancient times, silver has always been considered a valuable material. Even for the barbaric tribe of Vikings, silver is the treasure of choice. The Norsemen's affinity for the metal gives discoveries of silver artifacts significant historical value—much like a treasure recently found in the old mountains of Norway, one that had sat undisturbed since the 9th century AD.

Before farmer Tårn Sigve Schmidt was able to carve a new road for his tractor on his mountainous farm near Årdal, northwest of Oslo, he had to call in archaeologists to make sure there were no unique areas he was about to disturb. Luckily, he found them.

About seven inches beneath the dilapidated floorboards of what was likely once a dwelling for Viking slaves, a team of archaeologists found four heavy silver bracelets, all with different decorations, likely from over 1,100 years ago.

"At first, I thought it was a question of some twisted copper wires that you can often find in agricultural land," field archaeologist Ola Tengesdal Lygre said in a translated statement from the University of Stavanger, "but when I saw that there were several next to each other and that they were not copper at all, but silver, I realized that we had found something exciting."

Further investigation showed that, at one point, a "large and powerful Viking farm" was located on the property, with multiple houses and shelter for animals. The location gave the owners control of the entry into the fjord. The excavation crew also found soapstone pots, rivets, knife blades, and whetstones for sharpening tools.

However, there is nothing can be compared and generate much excitement than the buried treasure.

"This is definitely the biggest thing I have experienced in my career," Volker Demuth, project manager at the Archaeological Museum at the University of Stavanger, said in a statement.

"This is a unique find, because we very rarely find such objects exactly where they were placed. As a rule, such valuable objects are discovered on fields that have been plowed, where an object has been completely taken out of its original context. Since the silver hoard has not been moved, it can give us completely new insights into life and society in the Viking Age."

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The Mythical Story of "Maria Makiling"

At the south of Lake Laguna, on the island of Luzon, in the Philippines, stands an immense and solitary mass of Mount Makiling. Like many parts of the country and around the world, mountains and volcanoes became associated with legends, myths and ancient traditions and Mount Makiling is strongly associated with a mythical female entity named Maria Makiling.

According to local experts, Maria Makiling and is considered to be a spirit or forest nymph known as a diwata or lambana in Philippine folklore. Before the Philippines were colonized she was known as Dayang Masalanta or Dian Masalanta who could be called upon to stop or prevent natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, or storms.

Those living in the area she is also identified with the amount of fish caught in Laguna de Bay which is part of her realm and appears to be a spirit of abundance influencing the functioning of the natural world. Old stories attribute her as a benign spirit of nature that poor people could approach and ask for help whenever they needed it.

Those who claimed to have seen her, Maria Makiling a tall and slender woman of superhuman beauty, with sun-browned skin, big black eyes, and long black hair that reaches almost to her feet. She is a fantastic creature, from a long lineage of nymphs and sylphs. Her vaporous white tunic is made from moon rays, and the mysterious mists of the woods and the lake.

There was one old woman who claimed to have seen her a long time ago, when she was a child, crossing the meadows in the distance with such lightness that the grass did not even bend under her feet. Some deer hunters swore to have recognized her figure on the edge of a cliff, with her hair blowing in the wind under the moon light. They said that she had once passed in front of them, greeting them ceremoniously, before disappearing into the shadows of the forest. No one dared to follow her or spy on her, and everyone worshipped her.

It is believed that it is Maria who goes through the forest after a storm fixing broken branches and trees and repairing the nests of birds that have been damaged. She walks through the forest healing the broken wings of butterflies and clearing away debris from the forest floor and streams. Wherever she walks the sun shines and the birds sing and the flowers bloom and the animals frisk and play as she tidies up the forest after the storm.

It is not known whether Maria Makiling was named after the mountain, or whether the mountain was named after her. However, some people think that when seen from a certain angle and location Mount Makiling looks like the profile of a sleeping woman and this is said to be Maria. In Philippine mythology, there are other similar supernatural entities who are also mountain goddesses or spirits such as Maria Sinukuan who are found on Mount Arayat, Pampanga and Maria Cacao of Mount Lantoy, Cebu.

One of the best known stories about Maria Makiling is that she can transform ginger into gold which she does usually to help someone. In these stories, she often lives in a village as one of the community and is called upon to help one of the community in some way. Sometimes it is a mother with a sick child, or perhaps a husband may be seeking a cure for his sick wife.

However, when diagnosing the problem Maria recognizes the signs of malnutrition and poor diet rather than a disease or sickness and gives them ginger to take home. Invariably, by the time they get home the ginger has turned to gold which they can then sell or exchange for food and other needs. One foolish villager finding the ginger becoming heavy threw it away rather than carry it home.

In many local legends, Maria Makiling is cast as a rejected lover. One story tells how she had fallen in love with a hunter who had wandered into her territory. The two soon formed a relationship and became lovers and the hunter would climb up the mountain everyday to see her and they promised eternal love to each other. However, Maria was shocked to discover that her lover was being unfaithful and had married a mortal woman.

Naturally, Maria was devastated and concluded she could never trust the local people again realizing she was so very different to them and came to believe that they were just taking advantage of her good nature. Therefore, she withdrew her consent which allowed the trees and bushes to bear fruit and she stopped the animals and birds roaming the forest for the hunters to catch and stopped the fish from breeding in the lake. From then on she withdrew to the mountain and was seldom seen except occasionally by the light of the pale moon as she wandered through the forest alone.

Most stories about Maria have one common ending, she has distanced herself from humans because of betrayal, excessive hunting and indiscriminate felling of trees. What is evident in all of these stories is that human beings, for one reason or another, have disappointed her, and she has stopped showing her beneficent, mysterious and beautiful presence to them.

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The Multi-Million Dollar War Against Blackchin Tilapia

It will be a battle between man versus nature as Thailand seeks to stop the blackchin tilapia from wreaking havoc on the Southeast Asian country's waterways.

Like other invasive species, it is devouring almost everything on its path and outcompeting native species to the detriment of the ecosystems. Another issue is economic and could cost the country almost US$ 300 million.

"The core problem is that the blackchin tilapia prey on small fish, shrimp, and snail larvae, which are among Thailand's important aquaculture products," the BBC stated.

The West African fish may have escaped from a Charoen Pokphand Foods laboratory after the company imported 2,000 of them in 2010, or they could have boomed after being smuggled into the country.

As noted by BBC, it doesn't matter how it happened but what is expected to happen next. It's a path being taken by communities around the globe, as human actions and the warming climate allow invasive plants and animals to colonize areas far and wide.

"We will not pass a devastated ecosystem to the next generation," Bangkok lawmaker Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat told the outlet.

Because the tilapia can bear 500 fingerlings at once, the government has released Asian seabass and long-whiskered catfish to prey on the fish and doubled its bounty to US$ 0.42 per kilogram.

Residents are being encouraged to eat the catch too, but experts told the BBC that ousting the fish may not be possible.

"I don't see the possibility of eradicating it because we cannot limit its range," Suwit Wuthisuthimethavee of Walailak University said. "When it is in nature, it reproduces continuously."

In another measure, the government has genetically modified tilapia, which it hopes to release by the end of the year, to produce sterile offspring.

"Who will win?" Nattacha asked the BBC. "We need the people to follow the case closely; otherwise this matter will be quiet, and we will pass on this kind of environment to the next generation."

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Filipino Hero Is A National "Playboy"?

National hero Jose Rizal may have been born 152 years ago, but his legacy as a womanizer never ceases to amaze netizens here and abroad. Many considered Rizal the Country’ National Playboy, while others believed he won't be able to secure an elective position given the number of dalliance he had.

Rizal was only 16, a fresh graduate from Ateneo de Manila, when he met his apple in the eye, Segunda Katigbak. The two exchanged letters, and Rizal would often visit La Concordia College to see Segunda as well as two of his sisters. When she turned 16, however, Segunda was married to her town mate Manuel Luz.

After Katigbak, Rizal met Leonor Valenzuela, a tall girl from Pagsanjan whom she called "Orang." Rizal wrote her love letters too using invisible ink, which can be read by the warmth of a candle. They got separated when Rizal left for Spain.

Later, another Leonor captured Rizal’s heart for 11 long years and this time Rizal appeared to be seriously in love. Leonor Rivera kept close correspondence with Rizal during his travels, preventing him from falling in love with other women. But Leonor’s mother did not want Rizal for her so she hid his letters. Believing that Rizal had forgotten her, Leonor consented to Englishman Henry Kipping.

While still in love with Rivera, Rizal met Consuelo Ortiga y Rey in Madrid. Consuelo is a daughter of Don Pablo Ortiga, whose home Rizal and his friends frequented while in Spain. Rizal held back before his relationship with Consuelo turned serious, however, remembering Leonor and deferring to his friend Eduardo de Lete, who had been in love with Consuelo.

As if proving that Filipinos can charm people from any country, Rizal also wooed O Sei San, a Japanese samurai’s daughter. O Sei San helped Rizal hone his knowledge of Japanese, and also taught him the Japanese art of painting called su-mie.

An Englishwoman also fell in love with Rizal while he was in London. She was Gertrude Beckett, the eldest of three daughters in the family Rizal boarded with while he was annotating a history book. Their relationship was cut short when Rizal left London, however. Before going to Paris, Rizal gave Gertrude a sign of their brief relationship.

Rizal also left his mark on Frenchwoman Nellie Boustead, one of the daughters of Rizal's host in Biarritz, France. She was deeply infatuated with Rizal, even as she was being wooed by Antonio Luna. Rizal's refusal to convert to Protestantism and the disapproval of Nellie’s mother, however, stood in the way of their relationship.

Moving to Brussels in 1890, Rizal lived in the home of two Belgian sisters. One of them , Suzanne Jacoby, fell in love with the 29-year-old Rizal. And the feeling was mutual. But Rizal left for Madrid, leaving Suzanne in tears.

The last woman Rizal loved was probably the most well-known among many Filipinos. Josephine Bracken, an Irishwoman who sought Rizal in Dapitan for help for her blind adoptive father. George Taufer's blindness was untreatable, however, so he returned to Hong Kong, leaving Josephine behind.

Rizal fell in love with the woman she called "dulce extranjera" (sweet foreigner) even if his sisters suspected that she was an agent of the friars. He even wanted to marry her, but decided to take her instead as a common-law wife. Accounts say Josephine gave birth to a stillborn son with Rizal.

Those are the only ones that historians were able to take note of. Given the way Rizal behave in front of these women, nobody will be surprise that there are more females that got flittingly or seriously involved with the country’s national playboy, este national hero.

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Sword of Ramses II Found In Egypt

Egyptian archaeologists just made an amaizing discovery this month when they unearthed a sword which was marked by ancient pharaoh Ramses II, Egypt's Ministry of Culture and Tourism said.

The bronze sword with delicate engravings of the cartouche of the Egyptian king was buried for more than 3,000 years in an ancient military fort known as Tell Al-Abqain, located in the Beheira Governorate in northeast Egypt, south of Alexandria, the Egyptian government said in a 6 September news release.

Known as Ramses the Great, the pharaoh ruled Egypt from 1279 B.C. to 1213 B.C. and is credited with expanding Egypt's reach as far as modern day Syria to the east and Sudan to the south. As a 19th Dynasty pharaoh, Ramses was considered as a major world player and his riches spread throughout Egypt, as evidenced by archaeologists' recent finds detailing his long-lost empire.

Modern archaeologists found a temple in 2017 dedicated to the pharaoh in the Badrashin area in Giza. Last year, 2,000 rams' heads were found at the temple of Ramses II, which Egyptologists said showed the endurance of his impact.

Part of a statue of the great king — his head and chest — were found in the Temple of Kom Ombo during a project to protect the site from groundwater.

Al-Abqain — where the sword was discovered in mud barracks — also housed soldiers and contained warehouses for weapons, food and supplies, said Dr. Ahmed Saeed El-Kharadly, who led a group of archaeologists excavating the area. Large pottery remnants containing fish and animal bones and crock pots used for cooking were found along with personal items such as ivory, agate jars, and red and blue beads.

The fortress was situated to protect Egypt's northwestern border from attacks by Libyan tribes and Sea Peoples, the Egyptian government said.

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Pinoy Teacher: "Do Not Complain. Make A Difference"

It is widely known that public school teachers in the Philippines experience all sorts of hardships including low pay and lack of facilities, which is why this South Cotabato teacher's ingenuity has inspired so many people.

Viral on social media right now is Reynel Calmerin, a Grade 6 English teacher from the Polomolok Central Elementary School 3 who turned an old restroom into a colorful reading corner for his students using mostly just scrap wood.

He shared his project on Facebook on 2 June, Sunday and it now has more than 6,000 reactions, 4,000 shares, and close to 500 comments.

Calmerin recalled how he turned trash into treasure in a Facebook message to Coconuts Manila. The 32-year-old said that the former restroom, which is inside a classroom where he teaches, was already ripped off its facilities when he reported for work this school year. He wanted to reuse the space and said that he used scrap wood so that he could get rid of the bathroom tiles and cover them without having to paint the walls, which would cost more.

"If I remove the tiles, I need to polish it with cement and paint it. It is time-consuming and I don’t have [the] budget for that," Calmerin said.

It was a good thing that behind the classroom is a stock room for broken chairs, which he ended up using to cover the restroom's walls. They ended up becoming decorative too because, in their school, chairs are color-coded according to the grade level.

The makeover took about three days to finish and involved Calmerin deconstructing the chairs, cutting the wood, and attaching them to the frame he prepared for the wall. The teacher said he coated the wood with natural varnish but did not repaint them to give the room a rustic look.

"It is tough, believe me," he said laughing. "Because I am not a carpenter."

The teacher said he spent about PHP100 (US$ 1.92) on nails and varnish to create the wall. The decorations came from his own home or were donated by other teachers. He said some parents also provided financial assistance for the lights and electricity.

"Our school is promoting that bayanihan spirit," Calmerin said, referring to the Filipino term for communal unity.

He said the students and faculty loved what he did and that he still can't believe that his post has gone viral.

"I can’t believe it, but it gives me [the] opportunity to inspire others," he said. "They keep on sending messages and asking [for] suggestion on how to improve [their] classroom."

He also wants his students to learn a few things from all of this. "Be creative and be part of the solution. Do not complain. Instead, make a difference."

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What Did The Scientists Found Under The Doomsday Glacier?

The Doomsday Glacier has been the subject of everyone's attention lately, which is understandable because it brings with it many mysteries under the threat of catastrophe.

To get to the bottom of it, scientists had to use ice-breaking ships and underwater robots to find out that Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse, spelling catastrophe for global sea level rise.

Nonitoring the glacier is no easy task. Scientists have been doing this since 2018, where they formed a called the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration. The group have been studying Thwaites — often dubbed the "Doomsday Glacier" — up close to better understand how and when it might collapse.

Their findings, set out across a collection of studies, gave the world a clear picture of this complex and ever-changing glacier. The outlook is "grim," the scientists said in a report published recently, revealing the key conclusions of their six years of research.

They found rapid ice loss is set to speed up this century. Thwaites’ retreat has accelerated considerably over the past 30 years, said Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey and part of the ITGC team. "Our findings indicate it is set to retreat further and faster," he said.

The scientists project Thwaites and the Antarctic Ice Sheet could collapse within 200 years, which would have devastating consequences.

Thwaites holds enough water to increase sea levels by more than 2 feet. However, because it also acts like a cork, holding back the vast Antarctic ice sheet, its collapse could ultimately lead to around 10 feet of sea level rise, devastating coastal communities from Miami and London to Bangladesh and the Pacific Islands.

Computer modeling, however, showed while this phenomenon is real, the chances of it happening are less likely than previously feared.

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Faced With Human Extinction, We Can Rely On "The Crystal"

Scientists in the United Kingdom have found a way to store the entire human genome on a "5D memory crystal," just in case we are face the threat of extinction.

The crystal, which was developed by a team of researchers at the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre, could store the human blueprint and create a record of plant and animal species faced with extinction.

The university claimed that the crystal can hold up to 360 terabytes of information for billions of years and can withstand extreme conditions, including freezing, fires, direct impact force, cosmic radiation and temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Celsius.

In 2014, the crystal was awarded the Guinness World Record for "most durable digital storage material."

Kazansky’s team used ultra-fast lasers to inscribe the human genome data into voids as small as 20 nanometers (a nanometer is about one-billionth of a meter).

They describe the data storage on the crystal as 5D because the information is translated into five different dimensions of its nanostructures — their height, length, width, orientation and position.

"The 5D memory crystal opens up possibilities for other researchers to build an everlasting repository of genomic information from which complex organisms like plants and animals might be restored should science in the future allow," said Peter Kazansky, a professor of optoelectronics, who led the team at Southampton.

The team had to consider who – or what – would retrieve the information, so far off into the future.

It could be an intelligence (species or machine) – or it could be found in a future so distant that no frame of reference would exist for it. To help whoever finds it, the researchers included a visual key.

"The visual key inscribed on the crystal gives the finder knowledge of what data is stored inside and how it could be used," said Kazansky.

"Their work is super impressive," said Thomas Heinis, who leads research on DNA storage at Imperial College London and was not involved in the study. However, he says questions remain about how such data could be read in the future.

"What Southampton presents probably has a higher durability, however, this begs the question: what for? Future generations? Sure, but how will they know how to read the crystal? How will they know how to build the device to read the crystal? Will the device be available in hundreds of years?" he added. "I can barely connect my 10-year-old iPod and listen to what I listened back then."

For now, the crystal is stored in the Memory of Mankind archive, a time capsule within a salt cave in Austria.

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The Man Who Saved Hundreds of Children, Part 2

(Last of two parts)

When Nicholas Winton decided that he had to do something to help in repatriating children from danger zones before World War 2 breaks out in 1938, he knew that it will not be easy.

After his Prague office was swamped by hundreds of parents who place the future of their children in his hands, Winton contacted the governments of nations he thought could take in the children. Only Sweden and the English government said yes. Great Britain even promised to accept children under the age of 18 as long as he found homes and guarantors who could deposit £50 for each child to pay for their return home.

On 14 March 1939, Winton had his first successful operation. The first transport of children left Prague for Britain by airplane. Winton managed to organize seven more transports that departed from Prague's Wilson Railway Station. The groups then crossed the English Channel by boat and finally ended their journey at London's Liverpool Street station. At the station, British foster parents waited to collect their charges. Winton, who organized their rescue, was set on matching the right child to the right foster parents.

The last trainload of children left on 2 August 1939, bringing the total of rescued children to 669. It is impossible to imagine the emotions of parents sending their children to safety, knowing they may never be reunited, and impossible to imagine the fears of the children leaving the lives they knew and their loved ones for the unknown.

On 1 September 1939 the biggest transport of children was to take place, but on that day Hitler invaded Poland, and all borders controlled by Germany were closed. This put an end to Winton's rescue efforts. Winton has said many times that the vision that haunts him most to this day is the picture of hundreds of children waiting eagerly at Wilson Station in Prague for that last aborted transport.

"Within hours of the announcement, the train disappeared. None of the 250 children aboard was seen again. We had 250 families waiting at Liverpool Street that day in vain. If the train had been a day earlier, it would have come through. Not a single one of those children was heard of again, which is an awful feeling," Winton recalled.

After the war, Nicholas Winton didn't tell anyone, not even his wife Grete about his wartime rescue efforts. In 1988, a half century later, Grete found a scrapbook from 1939 in their attic, with all the children's photos, a complete list of names, a few letters from parents of the children to Winton and other documents. She finally learned the whole story.

Today the scrapbooks and other papers are held at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, in Israel.

Grete shared the story with Dr. Elisabeth Maxwell, a Holocaust historian and the wife of newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell. Robert Maxwell arranged for his newspaper to publish articles on Winton's amazing deeds.

Winton's extraordinary story led to his appearance on Esther Rantzen's BBC television program, “That's Life”. In the studio, emotions ran high as Winton's "children" introduced themselves and expressed their gratitude to him for saving their lives. Because the program was aired nationwide, many of the rescued children also wrote to him and thanked him. Letters came from all over the world, and new faces still appear at his door, introducing themselves by names that match the documents from 1939.

Today, after he was knighted by the Queen of England for his work, Sir Nicholas Winton, age 105, resides at his home in Maidenhead, Great Britain. He still wears a ring given to him by some of the children he saved. It is inscribed with a line from the Talmud, the book of Jewish law. It reads:

"Save one life, save the world."

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Other notable heroes during that time include the following:

1. Dimitar Peshev – a Bulgarian diplomat, Minister of Justice (1935-1936), before World War II. He rebelled against the pro-Nazi cabinet and prevented the deportation of Bulgaria's 48,000 Jews.
2. Chiune Sugihara – a Japanese diplomat who in 1940 wrote travel visas that allowed more than 6,000 Jewish refugees to escape from Lithuania.
3. Irena Sendler – a Polish nurse/social worker who smuggled some 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto.
4. Aristides de Sousa Mendes – a Portuguese diplomat issued visas to thousands of refugees fleeing Bordeaux, France.
5. Walter Süskind – a Dutch factory manager who helped about 600 Jewish children escape the Holocaust.
6. Angel Sanz Briz – a Spanish diplomat posted in Budapest who saved 5,200 Hungarian Jews from Nazi persecution by providing them with Spanish documents so that they could leave Hungary.
7. Giorgio Perlasca – an Italian who posed as the Spanish consul-general to Hungary in the winter of 1944, and saved 5218 Jews from transportation to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
8. Oskar Schindler – an ethnic German industrialist, German spy, and member of the Nazi party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories.

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The Man Who Saved Hundreds of Children, Part 1

(Part one of two)

Unlike today’s politicians who like to trumpet their achievements for self-promotion, there are several people in the past and present who have strived hard to help others without expecting any kind of reward or recognition. They change a lot of lives for the better and they remain unappreciated, but they don’t mind that because that is how they choose to live. For that alone, we owe these noble individuals a lot.

One of these prominent individuals is Nicholas Winton born as Nicholas Wertheim on 19 May 1909). His story and sacrifice has saved a lot of children during one of the darkest moments in human history.

It started in December 1938, when the 29-year old Winton was about to leave for a skiing holiday in Switzerland. He received a phone call from his friend Martin Blake asking him to cancel his holiday and immediately come to Prague

"I have a most interesting assignment and I need your help. Don't bother bringing your skis,” Blake said.

When Winton arrived, he was asked to help in the camps, in which thousands of refugees were living in appalling conditions.

"I found out that the children of refugees and other groups of people who were enemies of Hitler weren't being looked after. I decided to try to get permits to Britain for them,” Winton recalled.

“I found out that the conditions which were laid down for bringing in a child were chiefly that you had a family that was willing and able to look after the child, and £50, which was quite a large sum of money in those days that was to be deposited at the Home Office,” he added.

“The situation was heartbreaking. Many of the refugees hadn't the price of a meal. Some of the mothers tried desperately to get money to buy food for themselves and their children. The parents desperately wanted at least to get their children to safety when they couldn't manage to get visas for the whole family. I began to realize what suffering there is when armies start to march," the London stockbroker added.

There was on-going rescue mission by Jewish and Christian organizations to bring children to safe countries and they dubbed their operation “Kindertransport,” but Winton set a separate rescue operation.

Thousands of parents heard about Winton’s unique endeavor and hundreds of them lined up in front of the new office in Vorsilska Street, Prague, drawing the attention of the Gestapo. Winton's office distributed questionnaires and registered the children. Winton appointed Trevor Chadwick and Bill Barazetti to look after the Prague end when he returned to England. Many further requests for help came from Slovakia, a region east of Prague.

(To be continued.)

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Contact Us

Life mysteries is all around us. They surround us. They exist for us to look for and find them. As the quotation tells us, it is crucial for us to accept that mystery exists in all our lives. This takes humility and a realisation that we cannot, ever, know everything.

Welcome to the Vibrant and Bizarre blog. This is a site that seeks to examine the mysteries of life and the inspirational stories of people who who explore them. We will look for some clues that many think does not exist. What we will write here is much more a matter of personal experience though. We will feature articles based on intuition, epiphanies, and revelations.

If you want to contact us, just send us an email or you may want to just post below and we will try to get back to you with your concerns.

Happy blogging!

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These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on Vibrant & Bizarre send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies (such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and/or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

Vibrant & Bizarre has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. Vibrant & Bizarre privacy policy does not apply to, and it cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.

Contact Information

If users have any questions or suggestions regarding this privacy policy, please contact the author by sending an email.

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Disclosure Policy

This policy is valid from 21 September 2024.

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. For questions about this blog, please contact midelmigab@yahoo.com.

This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.

This blog abides by word of mouth marketing standards. We believe in honesty of relationship, opinion and identity. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post will be clearly identified as paid or sponsored content.

The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products.

The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.

To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org

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