Diksha Sundriyal
Directed by James Hawes, ‘One Life’ takes place before the first shot of the Second World War is fired. Germany has made threatening advances, to which Czechoslovakia falls victim, leading its citizens, especially the Jewish population, on uncertain terms. This adds to the mass movement of the people trying to flee the Nazi regime, and Prague becomes one of the centers for the refugees. While not all of them can be rescued, Nicholas Winton comes up with a plan to at least get the children to safety. He receives help from many people to make this plan a success. One of those people is his mother, Babi Winton.
Babette Winton was an Important Link in Saving Nicky’s Children
Born to a German Jewish family, Babette Winton married Rudolf Wertheim, with whom she had three children: Charlotte, Nicholas, and Robert. The couple had moved to England at the turn of the century, but during the First World War, when their country of residence found itself at war with the Germans, the Wertheim family decided to spare themselves the anti-German hatred of others and changed their surname to Wortham.
Like everyone else, they thought that this would be the end of the war and changed their surname back to Wertheim, but then, when the wind of Nazism started to blow across Europe, and another war, a greater one this time, became imminent on the horizon, the family dropped their German surname completely and became Wintons.
Barbara, aka Babette, aka Babi Winton, had inculcated a sense of empathy in her children and taught them to do the right thing no matter how impossible it might seem at the moment. It was this teaching of his mother that Nicholas Winton took to heart when he visited Prague and saw hundreds of refugees suffering, especially their children, with nowhere to turn to as the enemy marched closer. When Nicholas came back home and told his mother about the plan to rescue as many children as possible from Prague before the war, she joined him in his endeavor and helped make his plan a success.
As shown in the film, Babette became instrumental in the rescue that brought the Czech children to England and provided them with foster homes while their parents were rescued. Her house in Hampstead became a focal point from where she and Nicholas worked. She died sometime in 1978 in Hendon, Middlesex.
Playing the role of Babette Winton, actress Helena Bonham Carter channeled her own Jewish heritage. She revealed that Babette’s role “resonated on a different level” with her because her own family was involved in helping Jews escape the Nazi regime. Her grandmother was involved with Nicholas Winton’s program as well, as she sponsored a family from Prague. At the time of the Second World War, her grandfather worked in Spain as a Czech diplomat and helped around 3000 Jewish people with their transit visas to get out of the country safely. Putting herself in Babette’s shoes was also a way for the actress to connect with her grandparents, which brought an incredible sincerity in her performance, bringing Nicholas Winton’s mother alive on the screen with an undeniable spark.
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