r/MadeMeSmile • u/RoyalChris • Feb 25 '25

Wholesome Moments Nicholas Winton helped 669 Jewish children escape the Nazis and his efforts went unrecognised for 50 years. Then, in 1988, while sitting as a member of a TV audience, he suddenly found himself surrounded by the kids he had rescued, who were now adults.

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u/queefer_sutherland92 Feb 26 '25

My grandfather.

He never mentioned it. He was a small, quiet man who liked to build things and occasionally contribute to history.

Once I found a picture of him in a newspaper from the 50s showing the mayor some major building he was engineering. Never knew about that either.

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u/CrazyFish1911 Feb 26 '25

My wife's great aunt... was always active in veterans causes, and we knew she was a WAC member. She always said she was part of the propaganda dept. But then she got a spot on one of the Honor Flights to go to DC and a reporter saw she was the only woman on the flight and started interviewing her. Turns out she started out in propaganda but got recruited by the secret service (or whatever it was called then) and was sent out to do things like collect evidence on the balloon bombs that hit the west coast from Japan (they sent women in plain clothes because they wanted to keep the balloon bomb thing quiet). She was in a group that was championed by Eleanor Roosevelt and met her numerous times. Also received an award which was presented to her by General MacArthur. She spent the war doing intelligence work. Nobody knew for 40+ plus years because it was classified at the time and her ability to keep her mouth shut about things was one of the reason she was recruited.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '25

Damn, go auntie war hero! Breaking all the gossiping stereotypes

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u/CrazyFish1911 Feb 27 '25 edited Feb 27 '25

Lol, she was literally in an elevator with a bunch of the other women from the propaganda group and an army officer got on with them. He was quizzing them all about what they were working on and she stayed quiet. He finally looked at her specifically and said "what about you?" and her response was "They told us not to talk about it." He came back the next day and told her she was being reassigned.

Edit: I should mention that this lady was an absolute gem and a badass. Lived independently and was still competently driving until she died in her mid 90s. She believed in "service every day" and one of things she did that always cracked me up was that even in her 90s she would go down to the care center every week and run bingo "for the old people"... the fact that she was older than most of them never seemed to occur to her lol.