SAVIOURS IN THE SKY - RESOURCES
Adolph “Al” Schwimmer was crazy about every aspect of aviation. He had spent the war years in a USAAF uniform, flying throughout Asia and the Middle East. After he learned about the Haganah organization that was smuggling Holocaust survivors to Palestine, he knew he had found a mission. After repeated attempts to win over Jewish Agency personnel in the U.S.with his ideas, Schwimmer finally found a willing ear - in the Haganah’s star spy and smuggler, Yehuda Arazi. Following his handshake deal with Arazi, Schwimmer had burned his bridges and resigned from TWA. On their second meeting, Arazi handed him a fistful of dollars, telling him it was for expenses. Schwimmer left immediately for California. He was going to buy airplanes for the Haganah . Ben-Gurion was aware of the fact that Czechoslovakia had been a major arms producer for the Germans in WWII. It still had large inventories of munitions, even war planes. It had been a wartime manufacturer of the Luftwaffes prem...