BBC promotional material for a Sir Anthony Hopkins film about the kindertransport omitted the term “Jewish”, leading to furious claims that Jews were being “written out of history”.
The new release One Life tells the story of Sir Nicholas Winton’s efforts to save hundreds of children from the expanding Nazi regime, most of whom were Jewish.
But the website of the film’s co-producer BBC Film omitted the word “Jewish” from information about the new release, stating only that Sir Nicholas rescued “669 children”.
Promotional material has now been edited
Fellow producers See-Saw films used the same wording on its website, as did distributors Warner Bros.
HMV and a string of cinemas across the UK, including the Peckhamplex in London, posted on X, formerly Twitter, to promote a film they described as a tale of a man “who helped save Central European children from the Nazis”.
Promotional material has now been edited to describe the children as predominantly Jewish, after accusations that their identity was being erased.
Daniel Sugarman, the director of public affairs at the Board of Jewish Deputies, wrote online that “we’re getting written out of our own history”.
Descriptions updated
HMV apologised in a post on X, saying: “We understand how this choice of wording could be interpreted and we have updated it to say that Sir Nicholas Winton rescued 669 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi-occupation.”
Descriptions of the film on the websites of Warner Bros and the BBC were updated to include the phrase ‘predominantly Jewish children’”.
Sir Anthony plays an older Sir Nicholas in the film, which depicts the moment on That’s Life, hosted by Dame Esther Rantzen, when he was surprised on air by the people he rescued from Czechoslovakia.
List of vulnerable children
Sir Nicholas had drawn up a list of vulnerable children on the eve of the country’s annexation by Nazi Germany, and arranged transport to Britain and safe homes for them on their arrival.
His achievements were largely unknown until Dame Esther revealed them to a wider audience live on television, when she asked members of the studio audience to rise to their feet if their lives had been saved by Sir Nicholas’ efforts, prompting dozens of people to stand up and begin to applaud his efforts.
Sir Nicholas, who was dubbed a “British Schindler” after German humanitarian Oskar Schindler, died in 2015 aged 106.
