North West

Inside Out traced one of the children - Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines - who made Preston her home after the war.

She took us back to Prague to tell her amazing story.

War clouds

Before the Second World War Milena Fleischmann led a comfortable, happy life, moving to Prague when she was a young girl.

But her life was about to change dramatically as war clouds were gathering.

Milena was Jewish, and her father was politically active - and their future in Germany looked bleak.

But hope was at hand in the form of a British stockbroker.

Nicholas Winton was holidaying in Prague when he visited the refugee camps holding displaced Jews from the Nazi occupied Sudetenland.

Knowing that the Germans would continue their march deeper into Czechoslovakia, he vowed to help the children escape to Britain.

Escape from the Nazis

Nicholas Winton decided to find foster homes for the children.

Having found families willing to house them, Nicholas was then faced with the task of transporting them to the UK.

He arranged a series of trains to carry the hundreds of youngsters safely across Europe.

Milena still remembers the night she left Czechoslovakia well.

Her grandparents and uncle came to see her off at the station. Some of the children thought it was a big adventure.

"A lot of the kids had been told, we'll see you in a few months time," she recalls.

"I was nine, a fairly adventurous child, and my sister was four. My cousin was two and a half."

None of the evacuees knew what was in store for them...

Train journey

A total of 669 children were taken on the trains to Liverpool St Station in London.

Here they were met by Nicholas Winton and their new foster parents.

A family of Labour party activists from Ashton Under Lyne near Manchester came to meet Milena and her younger sister.

Auschwitz - some children were sent to the camp.

Milena's father was already in the UK, having escaped just before the Nazi occupation.

Her mother joined them later.

In the meantime, the Czech authorities set up a school in Wales for the evacuee children so that they didn't lose their national identity.

While Milena made friends at her new school in Wales, other Czech children weren't so lucky.

A train carrying 200 children was due to leave Prague station on 1st September 1939, but war broke out.

The train was stopped by the Nazis and the children were sent to concentration camps.

Left behind

Milena's cousin Zuzana was left behind in Czechoslovakia.

She refused to get on any of the trains to England - she couldn't bear to leave her parents behind.

Today she still lives in a flat in Prague.

Reunited - Milena and cousin Zuzana.

Her experience of the war couldn't be more different to Milena's as she and her family were captured by the Nazis and sent to a series of concentration camps.

Zuzana's father died in Auschwitz.

She was also sent to a family camp where her family were sentenced to the gas chambers.

"In Auschwitz you knew you were to be killed on a certain date. You were condemned."

Zuzana was one of the lucky ones - she survived.

Luckily, after the allied invasion, Germans needed workers so they selected 2,000 people to work in Germany.

Zuzana and her family went to Hamburg and worked hard repairing the damages from the air raids.

After the war

As the war ended, the children went back to their homeland - and their lives changed forever.

Family ties - Lady Milena and her family

Milena decided to stay in the UK.

Nicholas Winton kept his brave act a secret for more than 50 years until his wife came across a scrapbook of children's photographs in the loft.

Thanks to the BBC programme, That's Life, Milena - together with her school friend Vera - was finally able to come face to face with the man who saved her life.

Reunions of Nicholas Winton's children have kept the evacuees in touch over the years.

Milena has organised a series of reunions at the Czech embassy in London and back at their old school in Wales with Nicholas Winton as the guest of honour.

Heroic act

Inside Out took Milena back to Prague to meet her cousin Zuzana and share their memories.

A synagogue in the Jewish quarter of Prague bears the names of all 80,000 Czech victims of the holocaust.

Milena says, "Here on this wall are names of my grandparents and cousins and aunts. I could've been on this wall if it hadn't been for Nicholas Winton".

Milena and her Czech friends will never forget the kindness and courage of the London stockbroker who saved their lives.

But Sir Nicholas himself believes that for the rest of us simply learning of past horrors isn't enough.

He'll be 100-years-old in 2009 - and remains bemused as to the continuing interest in his story.

"I'm done with remembering," he says.

"It was merely having the idea that something could be done. There was nothing heroic about it."