Hugo Marom Gets Czech Wings

Pilot Hugo Marom, who left Czechoslovakia on the Kindertransport, recently received the wings of the Czech Air Force, as reported in the article "After sixty years, pilots finally get their wings" by Yossi Melman for Haaretz (March 31, 2008).

Marom was born in Czechoslovakia to the Meisel family, whose family tree shows that they spent 1,000 years in the country. "My father used to say that we were more Czech than the Czechs," he said with a smile.

Marom's life was saved when he was sent out of Czechoslovakia to Great Britain as part of the Kindertransport in 1939. He returned to his homeland after World War II and was offered a spot in a pilots' course for Czech Jews in 1948; those who completed the course were supposed to be sent to help the fledgling Jewish state fight for its existence....

After completing the course, Marom moved to Israel and became one of the first members of the IAF [Israel Air Force]. He was the first commander of the flight school and made the rank of major - the most veteran major in the air force, he said - and retired from the IAF in 1954. He served for 10 years as the chief test pilot for the Defense Ministry and Israel Aerospace Industries, and went on to plan airports around the world as a private consultant. He planned airports in the United States and Paraguay, and is working on Israel's second international airport, which is slated to go up off the coast of Tel Aviv after the Sde Dov airport shuts down.

Thanks to Joseph Haberer for the lead.

Nicholas Winton Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Bernard Josephs at The Jewish Chronicle reports that "More than 33,000 Czech schoolchildren have persuaded their government to nominate for the Nobel Peace Prize a British man who rescued hundreds of youngsters from the Nazis."

Former London Stock Exchange clerk Sir Nicholas Winton, 93, was instrumental in rescuing more than 650 children in Kindertransports via eight trains between March and August 1939.

In the article, Sir Nicholas remembers a ninth train.

A ninth train, the biggest, was to leave Prague on September 3, 1939, the day Britain entered the war — but it never left the station. "Within hours of the announcement, it disappeared,” he recalled. "We had 250 families waiting at Liverpool Street that day in vain. If the train had been a day earlier, it would have come through.

"Not a single one of those children was heard of again."

Known as the "British Schindler," Sir Nicholas has been honored internationally for his good deeds.