Since this month heralds the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Berlin Airlift (more on that below), the hero has to be Colonel Gail Halvorsen of the US Army Air Forces. On approach to Tempelhof Airport, Halvorsen’s signal of dipped wings was the alert for young Berliners to watch out for handmade parachutes stuffed with candy to appear from the sky! Other pilots soon joined in, and it’s estimated that ‘Operation Little Vittles’ would deliver 23 tons of sweets by air, via 250,000 mini-parachutes to the citizens of beleagured West Berlin. Halvorsen also orchestrated ‘candy-drops’ in Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania and more. Born in 1920, he lives today in Utah.

Otto Weidt (born on May 2nd, 1883) and his wife Else operated a factory employing blind and deaf craftspeople, many of whom were Jewish, in the Hackescher quarter of central Berlin. As a young man, Otto Weidt’s eyesight declined, though he would serve as a medical orderly during WWI. After becoming blind, he established his broom-making workshop, counting among his clients the German Army (Wehrmacht) itself! Otto’s connections allowed his business to be classed as ‘indispensable to the war effort’ and he used his status to bribe the Gestapo, obtain false documents for and provide safehouses to his Jewish workers, some of whom lived in hiding in the factory. Although the Nazis did eventually murder many of the workers, the Weidts did assist the survival of several, including Alice Licht (who subsequently emigrated to Israel) and Inge Deutschkron (a prominent Berlin-based speaker to this day!) After Otto’s death of natural causes in 1947, Else Weidt continued to run the workshop until 1952.