"A British man who saved hundreds of Jewish children from Czechoslovakia from the Nazi concentration camps in the Holocaust, has been nominated for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize.

"Sir Nicholas Winton, dubbed by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as "the British Oskar Schindler," was a young stockbroker when he
pressed the London authorities into agreeing to take in the children if he could find homes for them. And he did. The 669 youngsters were sent to foster parents - mostly in England, a small number in Sweden. In all, eight trainloads carried the mostly Jewish children from Prague through Hitler's Germany to Britain.

"Winton had kept his heroic deed to himself for half a century. His pivotal role in the rescue operation was revealed in the late 1980s after his wife found a scrapbook documenting his work in their attic.

"In October 2007, 98-year-old Winton was awarded the Cross of Merit of the 1st class by Czech Defense Minister Vlasta Parkanova for saving the children.

"At the ceremony, Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said that the Czech
diplomacy decided to back schoolchildren who had collected more than 32,000 signatures in their bid to nominate Winton for the Nobel Peace Prize.

"He was awarded another top Czech decoration, the Tomas Garrigue Masaryk Order, in 1998.

"Previous Peace Prize laureates include former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and President Shimon Peres for their efforts to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians; former prime minister Menachem Begin and former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat for making peace; and Jewish author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel."