Brendan Kelly: Montrealer recalls being saved from Nazis by hero of One Life film

Jane Litwack was one of hundreds of children saved by Nicholas Winton just before the Second World War.

Article content

The first thing Jane Litwack said to me when we sat down at the Second Cup café on Sherbrooke St. near her home in western N.D.G. was that she has a rotten memory.

The comment gave me pause, given that we were set to talk about what happened to her in the summer of 1939 as a young girl in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. But, luckily, it turned out she was exaggerating how little she remembers.

Advertisement 2

Article content

Article content

We were meeting because the film One Life comes out this week. It officially opens Friday but is playing in some Montreal theatres Thursday. The film, which had its première at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, is based on the true story of Nicholas Winton, a young British stockbroker who helped almost 700 children, most of them Jewish, escape from Czechoslovakia just before the Second World War.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Article content

Advertisement 3

Article content

Anthony Hopkins plays Winton later in life, with British actor Johnny Flynn playing the young Winton. The cast also includes Helena Bonham Carter, Lena Olin and Jonathan Pryce.

It’s a fair bet most of the children he helped bring to England would have been killed in the Holocaust if they hadn’t been able to flee.

One of those children was Litwack. Her family — whom she describes as a non-observant Jewish family — was living in Bratislava and by 1938 her father, a lawyer, was already worried about what might happen to them. One of her uncles in Austria had already been sent to a concentration camp.

Her father made it to England in 1939 and started trying to do whatever he could to get his wife and three daughters out. Winton had begun working to help children escape, and at the time Britain was allowing children under 17 to come in as refugees as long as they had a foster family willing to house them and pay 50 pounds.

Finally, at the end of June 1939, Litwack, who was eight at the time, and her two sisters were given the green light to get on the train to take them toward England. Litwack doesn’t remember it being a traumatic moment.

Advertisement 4

Article content

“People ask if I was afraid,” Litwack said. “First of all, I told you I have a rotten memory, but my memory is I was not afraid because I wasn’t alone. I was with my sisters.”

She also remembers German soldiers patrolling the train station, opening suitcases. Then the train took off, headed to the Dutch town Hook of Holland, where the kids were put on a boat to England. She and her two sisters ended up with a family in Hampshire.

Litwack doesn’t have memories of it being a tough time adapting to a new country.

“Honestly, I have the kind of memory that remembers good things. I don’t remember bad things,” Litwack said.

She adds that “I have a bad memory altogether,” but many of us would think that kind of selective memory might actually be a good thing.

Her mother soon made it to England and after both parents did the required year of service, working for another family, they picked up the kids and moved to Manchester.

Eventually, in 1951, they made their way to Montreal.

“I’ll tell you why we chose Montreal,” Litwack said. “My father’s family had all been killed in the Holocaust except for his brother. There were five kids in the family. He and his brother and three sisters. His brother’s family got out and got into France before the war and lived in hiding in France. When the two brothers found each other after the war, we had been brought up English and his brother’s family had been brought up French in France. Then the Korean War started and they said ‘We’re getting out of Europe, with the atomic bomb and everything. It’s too dangerous to be in Europe.’ So where do you think they could find where the French family and the English family could live in the same city?”

Advertisement 5

Article content

Well Montreal, of course. Both families moved to the Snowdon area. And she has been in the west end of Montreal ever since. Litwack, who taught English as a second language, started a family here. Her husband died in 2016 and she has two daughters, one in Toronto, another in Seattle.

Jane Litwack shows a visitor some of her collectibles, including her parents' silverware, at her home in N.D.G. on Thursday, March 7, 2024.
Jane Litwack shows a visitor some of her collectibles, including her parents’ silverware, at her home in N.D.G. on Thursday, March 7, 2024. Photo by John Mahoney /Montreal Gazette

In 1990, she finally met Winton at a reunion in Wales of the Czech boarding school she attended.

“I find it incredible that one person could organize himself and other people (to help these children) … and that he felt he needed to do that and did it and saved so many lives.”

She became very emotional as she talked about how she was lucky that her parents were able to come with them, but that so many kids made it out, but their parents didn’t and didn’t survive the Holocaust.

“I feel lucky, and I feel a lot of us should pass on the life we’ve had, you know, pay it forward.”

She was at the première of One Life at TIFF and they had her stand up after the screening. When everyone applauded, she felt she didn’t necessarily deserve it.

“I was just a saved child, I didn’t do anything.”

[email protected]

twitter.com/brendanshowbiz

Recommended from Editorial

Advertisement 6

Article content

Article content