At the age of 94, Zuzana Marešová, the last of the so-called Winton children living in the Czech Republic, left forever. As a little girl in 1939, she was one of 669 children whose lives were saved by British broker Sir Nicholas Winton by transporting her from occupied Prague to London.
Zuzana Marešová died at the age of 94, the last of the so-called Winton’s children living in the Czech Republic. She was among the 669 mostly Jewish children who traveled from Prague to London by train at the beginning of the Second World War thanks to their British rescuer – Sir Nicholas Winton. TASR informs about this according to the Sunday report of the Novinky.cz portal.
- Zuzana Marešová died at the age of 94.
- She was the last Winton child living in the Czech Republic.
- She learned about her rescue only after 1990.
- Nicholas Winton saved 669 Jewish children from the Nazis.
In 1939, she reached England
Representatives of the Memory of the Nation project announced Marešová’s death on the social network Facebook.
Zuzan’s father Maximilián Spitzer was a Czechoslovak Jew, Pavla’s mother was a Christian from Vienna. In the spring of 1939, my father traveled to England to establish a branch of his company there. Thanks to Winton, the mother then managed to send all three daughters – Lily, Dita and Zuzana – to England. She also came to England later.
Marešová did not learn about the circumstances of her departure from the republic in 1939 until after 1990. It was then that she also learned for the first time that she was among the so-called Winton children.
The first train left Prague in May 1939
British broker and humanitarian worker Nicholas Winton was born on May 19, 1909. He saved 669 mostly Jewish children who were taken by trains from the Nazi protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to Britain. The first train left Prague in May 1939, the last in September of the same year. Most of the children’s families perished during the wars. Winton became known to the wider public only thanks to a meeting with his rescued “children” organized by the British radio and television station BBC in 1988.
In 1998, he was received at Prague Castle by the President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, and awarded the Order of TG Masaryk. In 2002, he was knighted by the British Queen in his native Britain.
He died in 2015 at the age of 106.
