Franklin Roosevelt Administration: Letter from Sir Nicholas Winton to Franklin Roosevelt

16th May, 1939

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Washington, D.C.,

U.S.A.

 

Esteemed Sir,

Perhaps people in America do not realize how little is being and has been done for refugee children in Czechoslovakia. They have to depend entirely on private guarantors to get into England, which means that somebody has to take full responsibility for maintenance, upkeep, and education, until they are 18 years of age. No other country is taking an interest in them except for Sweden, which took 35 children last February. We at this office have case-papers and photos of over 5000 children, quite apart from a further 10,000 whom we estimate have to register. Actually, so far, we have brought only about 120 into England.

In Bohemia and Slovakia today, there are thousands of children, some homeless and starving, mostly without nationality, but they certainly all have one thing in common: there is no future, if they are forced to remain where they are. Their parents are forbidden work and the children are forbidden schooling, and apart from the physical discomforts, which all this signifies, the moral degradation is immeasurable. Yet since Munich, hardly anything has been done for the children in Czechoslovakia. Many of the children are quite destitute having had to move more than once since they originally fled from Germany.

Is it possible for anything to be done to help us with this problem in America? It is hard to state our case forcibly in a letter, but we trust to your imagination to realize how desperately urgent the situation is.

Believe me, Esteemed Sir, with many thanks,

Your obedient Servant,

Nicholas Winton.

HON. SEC.

Read more: http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-national-archives-finds-historic-winton-letter-to-fdr/
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