I am not much of a joiner and I usually go out of my way to avoid becoming a member of an organization. However, I have been a Rotarian for 30 years, and the story of Rotarian Nicholas Winton who died this week at 106 makes me glad I joined:
Go here to read the rest. Winton did all of this for nine months as a volunteer operating largely on his own. He used his own money to bribe Nazi officials to get the kids out. Born a Jew he used to say that he saved the kids because they were kids and not Jewish kids. Perhaps the most remarkable part of his story is that for the next fifty years he never said a word about what he had done, until his wife in 1988 found a scrapbook where he listed the kids he had saved and she asked him about them.
Winton was bemused by the honors showered on him late in his life, including a knighthood. He thought that he had merely done what any decent person would have done in his place. Ah, but so many can recognize great evil, but how few do anything about it? Confronted by a deadly evil about to consume the world, Winton acted when most people stood still. May he now be enjoying a great reward for loving his neighbor as himself.
what an inspiration today! God rest his wonderful soul