This is a picture of Abernant Lake Hotel in Wales, where some of Winton's children were accommodated.
In the fall of 1943 our Czechoslovak state school was given a former hotel to use, which had now been converted to a boarding school. It's hard to say exactly how many of us children were there in total. Someone would arrive, someone would leave, graduate, or if he had parents in England, they'd take him and put him into an English school for his last year, so that he'd learn at least a bit of English. I think that there could have been about 150 of us, but that's an estimate. Recently we were discussing how many of us had been Winton's children and someone said that it might have been about 25 percent.
The countryside there was beautiful. We barely knew there was a war going on, so we were protected in this aspect as well. But for a few exceptions, I think that everyone liked it there, we were very happy there. When school was out we?d sometimes borrow a bike and ride around in the hills, especially on weekends. The countryside there is beautiful, gorgeous. The property also had a lake, so it was nice for a walk of 20 minutes or so. The boys had their soccer team, and we girls played volleyball, handball or ping-pong. We spent a lot of time playing sports. Each Saturday evening there'd be some sort of program, and someone had to prepare it, usually the older ones took care of it. It was quite varied, from dance parties, listening to gramophone records through various quizzes, plays, Czech ones as well as English, or discussions. We'd discuss various subjects, the equality of women, about what would be once we returned...
