In 1938, a 29-year-old English stockholder was invited by a friend to visit Prague when their planned skiing trip to Switzerland was cancelled. Instead, Sir Winton visited refugee camps in Sudetenland, which was a Germanspeaking part of Czechoslovakia. Sir Winton realized that it would be very difficult for the refugees to be able to leave Czechoslovakia, and therefore, he focused on trying to transfer some the children, mostly Jewish, from Czechoslovakia to England. He took the letterhead from an existing organization called the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia and added “Children’s Section” to the heading. He became the “chairman” of this new division and sought English families to adopt the orphans from the refugee camps. Sir Winton would forge travel documents for the orphans when the proper documents did not come quickly enough from the British government. He would reserve a train and the orphans would travel from Prague through Holland and then eventually reach London. A total of eight trains carrying 669 orphans reached London. A ninth train was scheduled to depart carrying 250 children on September 1, 1939, but it was stopped at the train depot when war was declared.

Questions

1. Discuss how this issue would be addressed using each of the teleological frameworks.

2. Explain why Sir Winton is considered a humanitarian.

3. Winton saved many children on his orphan trains. Discuss the ethical implications of what Winton accomplished.