By Julie Jacobson on The Post…
If not for the unselfish determination of a Masterton man, known only as Mr Keith, Helene Ritchie may never have been born, and if not for a rather more famous one – Nicholas Winton – Ritchie’s uncle might have been a genocide statistic.
Winton is the subject of the film One Life, now screening in cinemas across the country. He is credited with helping save almost 700 children from the Holocaust.
One of those children, who later referred to themselves as “Nicky’s children“ was Helene Ritchie’s uncle, Bobby Fantl.
Mr Keith was, for all intents and purposes, Ritchie’s own Nicholas Winton, helping get Bobby’s mother and Helene’s grandmother Pola Fantl and his sister Lidi (Helen’s mother) to New Zealand.
It’s a long and complicated back story, a story that’s taken a determined, at times obsessed, Ritchie five decades to unravel.
Read the full story (paywalled) on The Post here.
