Transcript
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A Torah anytime original series.
In the year 1948, Leon Franco, Howard
Livingston, [music]
George Lichter, and Coleman Goldstein
were enjoying regular life after serving
in the American Air Force as fighter
pilots flying planes during World
[music] War II. They were thrilled that
the war was over and they were more than
ready to start families and live
peaceful lives. But one day out of the
blue, an old friend of theirs, a man
named Stephen Schwartz, he called them
up and left them all a message. Get to
the Henry Hudson Hotel in Manhattan and
get there fast. The survival of the
Jewish people is at stake.
So knowing that the Holocaust was over,
these four ex-fighter pilots were
confused, but nevertheless they rushed
to the hotel to hear Stephen Schwartz
out.
They all met in the hotel and [music]
they see Steve sipping on a glass of
vodka in the lobby and he looked at the
four young pilots and he said,
Listen here.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews are about
to pour into [music] Palestine right now
and almost all of them are completely
unaware that the five neighboring Arab
[music] countries are planning on
invading and slaughtering every one of
them. Egypt declared that we will do
what Hitler did only worse.
And Steve put down his glass and he
looked at these four young 20-year-olds,
the Jews have absolutely no way of
defending themselves. We found four
German planes that were abandoned in
some field in Czechoslovakia and the
Jewish people need you to fly them.
>> [music]
>> Can you become the Jewish people's air
force?
And the four boys just looked at each
other. They had finally begun living a
peaceful life and now they're being
asked to climb back into the seat of a
fighter plane and not any old fighter
plane, but German fighter planes.
Stephen Schwartz looked at them with a
fire in his eye and he said, Millions of
Jewish people in the Holocaust [music]
lost their entire past. You four have
the opportunity to at least give them a
future and the four looked at Steve and
said, Okay, we're in. So the four
traveled east
and they secretly declared themselves
the Jewish people's temporary air force.
An air force consisting of four people,
not 4,004, not 404, not 44, four people,
possibly the smallest air force of all
time and certainly the most frightened.
On May 29th, 1948, [music] the immense
Egyptian army was 20 miles out of Tel
Aviv and Leon Franco approaches Harold
Livingston and told him, Listen, if one
of us doesn't go up and bomb them out
right now, there will be no tomorrow and
there will be a bloodbath, okay? Harold
said, Okay, I'm going to go.
So lifting up the used German plane to
the sky, Harold looked down and he could
see scores of fresh Jewish immigrants on
the ground below hoping and praying that
they could finally start their lives
anew and he nervously looked up ahead
and saw the massive Egyptian army and he
quietly flew his plane until he was
moments away from being directly on top
of them, on top of their gunmen, on top
of their artillery, on top of the
thousands of soldiers who might shoot
him down at any second.
And he tilted his plane entirely on its
side to get the most direct angle to
drop the bombs. He closed his eyes and
screamed, Sh'ma Yisrael, and let the
bombs fall and fall they did and in a
sheer miracle
sent straight from heaven, the Egyptian
army was left in shambles and Harold
flew back completely unscathed. The
oncoming Egyptian onslaught was ground
[music] to a halt. The war was won and
the potential barbaric slaughter of
thousands of Jews was avoided. And years
later, when he sat down with an
interviewer,
Harold was asked, What are you thinking
as you were flying towards the Egyptian
army? He said, I looked [music] up to
heaven and I said, God in heaven,
those Arabs down there might want to win
this war.
We Jews need to win this war. Those
Arabs might want to come out victorious,
we need to. Those Arabs might want to
claim this land, we need to claim this
land. Hashem save us so the memory of
the 6 million can live on. Hashem save
your precious nation so we can continue
to make you proud because [laughter] our
past is too glorious and our future is
too bright.
We, as Jews, look to our glorious past
for our spiritual energy to propel us
into the future. We rid ourselves of the
stagnancy of death by ensuring that we
are forever drinking from the fresh
springs of life. With youthfulness and
zest, we take our ancient traditions and
we use them to light up the world. We
look to the past, we look to the future,
we cling to our heritage and let it
guide us down the road of life. Today,
tomorrow,
forever.
>> [music]
