The Kassel Mission-- Part 3: Huge American Losses, But Mr. Weinstein Survived Because of a Village Mayor

And, until this obituary for Ira Weinstein, 96, who died on January 24, 2016, I had never heard of it before.

Born and raidsed in Chicago, he attended Crane Technical High School and began his advertising career with Goldblatt's before joining the U.S. Army Air Forces.

Mr. Weinstein had already flown two dozen missions before the Kassel Mission.  Four planes had to abort the mission.  Of the ones that continued, 25 crashed in Germany, two crash-landed in occupied France, one crashed in Belgium, two made it back across the English Channel but made forced landings on an emergency strip, one crashed near the base and four made it back to the base.Anti-aircraft fire forced Weinstein to bail out and on his way down, he saw the pilot of his plane being killed by farmers with a pitchfork.

He was taken into custody, but the village mayor heard him speaking Yiddish and realized he'd be surely killed if turned over to the Nazi secret police.

The mayor said: "I'll have to deliver you to a Luftwaffe base before the SS discovers you are here.  Those SS men do not take Jews prisoners.  They kill them."

I was wondering about Mr. Weinstein having that name his incarceration by the Nazis would have been bad.

--GreGen