In 1939, with little fanfare and no desire for publicity, 28-year-old Nicholas Winton saved the lives of 669 children, most of them Czechoslovakian Jews, from the onslaught of the Holocaust.

Shuttling between Prague and London, Winton developed plans that allowed the children to travel by train across Hitler’s Germany to Winton’s native Britain.

For nearly 50 years, Winton kept his rescue actions a secret. However, the recent release of The Power of Good, a DVD that details his heroic exploits, drew new attention to Winton, who, at the age of 97, lives in Maidenhead, England.

The Center for Holocaust Studies at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft presented a screening of the DVD last month, and one of the children who was rescued by Winton and sent to England told the audience about his escape.

George Korper, a one-time Monmouth County resident who now lives in Connecticut, was 13 when, in 1939, he was part of a Kindertransport that brought him from Czechoslovakia to a hostel for young refugee boys located north of Birmingham. He spent the next three years there before moving in with an English family. When Korper was 18, he joined Czechoslovak pilots serving in units of the Royal Air Force.

When the war ended, Korper went home to Prague to search for his family. The news was somber: His parents had been gassed in Auschwitz, and his sister, who survived other Nazi death camps, was plagued with health problems after she moved back to Prague.

Korper, who is now 80, did not meet Winton until three years ago at a survivors’ gathering in New York City. He had prepared a letter to read to the man who saved his life.

“I thanked him for what he did for me and for all of us,” Korper told NJ Jewish News. “It was an emotional evening for me, but I had hoped to meet him one day. One out of every 10 people who were my age during the Holocaust survived; the others died at the hands of the Nazis. Obviously, the outcome of my life would have been different if I had remained in Czechoslovakia.”

Korper resided in Canada for many years and has lived in the United States for the past 26 years. He knows how lucky he is.

“The heroes are the survivors who went through so many terrible things,” he said. “But despite that, there were many who put their own lives at risk to help them survive. Nicholas Winton was this kind of person, and I was blessed to be one of the children he saved.”

Winton’s plan to rescue children began after he visited Czechoslovakia in 1938. He was earning a substantial salary as an employee of the London stock exchange and was planning a skiing vacation in Switzerland during the Christmas season.

Before he left on his holiday, Winton received a call for help from a friend in Czechoslovakia who was working on behalf of refugees who were streaming into Prague. Winton traveled to the city and learned there were no specific plans to save the area’s Jewish children from the imminent threat of the Holocaust.

“Commissions were dealing with the elderly and the vulnerable, but people in the refugee camps kept telling me that nobody was doing anything for the children,” Winton told the producers of the Power of Good, according to background material on the film.

He contacted the Refugee Children’s Movement in London, whose mission was to find the lodgings and funds required by the British government before it could approve the entry of those persecuted by the Nazis.

While the arrangements for the funding and host families were falling into place in Britain, Winton developed plans for a Kindertransport rescue operation that eventually relocated 669 Jewish children to England in 1939.

As word of the rescue effort began to spread through Prague, parents flocked to Winton’s hotel room, which he used as his temporary office, to ask that their children be included in the Kindertransport.

“It seemed hopeless,” Winton said. “Each group felt they were the most urgent.”

Winton never told his friends or family about his rescue mission. His story came to light several years ago when his wife, Greta, found an old scrapbook in the couple’s attic. After asking her husband about the many children whose photos and letters were contained in the book, Winton finally told her the story of the rescue.

After the Kindertransport began, Winton returned home to help supervise things at the children’s destination. In typical fashion, he watched from a distance as exhausted children from Czechoslovakia piled out of trains at London’s Liverpool Street Station. He stood back as English foster parents collected the refugee children and took them home.

“I didn’t do anything special,” Winton told the producers. “I just saw what was going on in Czechoslovakia and did what I could to help.”

But Korper told the gathering that everything Winton did during the war years was extremely special.

“I owe him everything,” Korper said. “Because of him, I survived and had a family. I had a life, and the gift of life came from him.”