Even a child can help save lives.

During the second world war, a seven year old boy helped dozens of Jews escape the Nazis. The Sunday Times newspaper reported that Matteus Guidon’s father, a pastor, would take his son out of school and get him to lead Jewish fugitives across the 9,400 ft Fuorcia pass to his grandfather’s house up in the mountains.

From there they made it into the interior of Switzerland where they were safe from the gas chambers. This was necessary because in 1942 Switzerland was turning refugees away at the border saying ‘the lifeboat was full’.

For decades, Matteus’s remarkable story had been known only to a few people in Samedan, a village close to St Moritz. It was uncovered by Jim Ring, a British historian, while he was researching a book on wartime Switzerland.