From School to Sky: Joseph's Tale of War

By George Halpern

Weeks after the outbreak of World War II, Joseph Halpern's Polish town, Vladimir Volynsky, in what is now part of Ukraine, was annexed by the Russians. Because of his high intelligence, mechanical prowess, and athletic ability, he was soon hand-picked to be an air cadet. On June 22, 1941, Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and launched Operation Barbarossa, an all-out attack on Russia. Halpern became a fighter pilot for the Russian Air Force, serving the Allies in trying to bring down the Nazi regime. Later on, Halpern became a special forces commando; trained in martial arts, to withstand torture, see in the dark, hear whispers, disappear in a crowd, and kill with his hands. He was shot down four times, and after cheating death on many occasions (and receiving many military honours), following World War II, he founded the Herzl Orphanage, and helped create the Israeli Air Force. He finally came to Canada and was reunited with his parents he had presumed were dead. He went on to a distinguished career with RCA Victor and the University of Ottawa. Joseph Israel Halpern played a crucial role in NASA's Apollo missions. His initials, JIH, remain carved onto a battery that is still on the moon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Dec 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9780228858669

George Halpern

George Halpern is better known as "Georgie Bones," a skilled blues guitarist, singer-songwriter, and performer, who also plays a mean harmonica. He performs a tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan with his band Cold Shot. In 2021, he was awarded a life membership by the Toronto Musicians Association. The award cites his "solidarity with...fellow musicians, which helps us to grow as a musicians' community and achieve fair working conditions and dignity as working musicians." For more information, check www.georgiebones.com. He has also been a salesperson, entrepreneur, and data technician. He lives in Vancouver with his beloved wife Joan, and has two adult daughters, Mandy and Sarah. From School to Sky: Joseph's Tale of War is his first book, and it demonstrates his long-time interest in history.

Book preview

From

School

to

Sky

Joseph’s Tale of War

George Halpern

From School to Sky

Copyright © 2021 by George Halpern

www.fromschooltosky.com

Cover Concept: Pete Fortey

Author photo: Michael Gladkey

Jewish badge on cover: photo by Daniel Ullrich

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-5865-2 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-5864-5 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-5866-9 (eBook)

for Heather Pigden-Halpern

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

Prologue

Chapter 1 My Whole World Was Vladimir Volynsky

Chapter 2 It Begins

Chapter 3 Operation Barbarossa—and What Came Before

Chapter 4 Battle of Moscow

Chapter 5 The Siege of Leningrad

Chapter 6 General Order 270

Chapter 7 Of Parachutes and Bureaucracy

Chapter 8 Shot Down for the First Time

Chapter 9 Night Witches Cast Their Spell

Chapter 10 Big Fish

Chapter 11 Without Papers at the Movies

Chapter 12 From Siberia to Kolyma

Chapter 13 The List

Chapter 14 Life in a Dolomite Mine

Chapter 15 Special Training and Staying Alive

Chapter 16 Ambrosia

Chapter 17 Captured on a Special Mission

Chapter 18 The Promise

Chapter 19 Cigarettes Can Save your Life

Chapter 20 Not One Step Back

Chapter 21 The Kitten of the Volga

Chapter 22 Sophie

Chapter 23 Kursk

Chapter 24 Fake It Till You Make It

Chapter 25 It’s Over

Chapter 26 Endgame

Chapter 27 The Horned Ones

Chapter 28 Afterwards

Chapter 29 What Happened to Isabelle?

Chapter 30 A Promise Is a Promise

Chapter 31 Lots of Kids Running Around

Chapter 32 Your Future Country Needs You

Chapter 33 Time to Leave Berlin

Chapter 34 I Still Won’t Eat Oranges

Chapter 35 Oh, Canada

Afterword

Acknowledgements

List of Photos

Pic 1. Rabbi Schlomo Halevi Halpern

Pic 2. Bernard Halpern holding Joseph

Pic 3. Bernard and Ethel Halpern with son Joseph

Pic 4. Joseph’s grandmother Ester Halpern (middle)

Pic 5. Joseph’s maternal grandfather Lazar-David Spizman

Pic 6. Joseph’s maternal grandmother Chaya Spizman

Pic 7. Joseph Halpern with sleeves rolled up with Isabell Perell (top centre) in gymnasium

Pic 8. Leaders gather to sign Germany and Russia’s non-aggression pact

Pic 9. The Polikarpov 1-15

Pic 10. The Polikarpov 1-16

Pic 11. The Polikarpov Po-2

Pic 12. The Night Witches collaborate

Pic 13. Marina Raskova

Pic 14. Irina Fyodorovna Sebrova

Pic 15. Nadezhda Vasilyevna

Pic 16. Yevdokiya Davidovna Bershanskaya

Pic 17. Russian partisan in full fighting gear

Pic 18. The Yakovlev Yak-1 a maneuverable, fast, and competitive Russian fighter aircraft

Pic 19. Joseph’s future wife Sophie

Pic 20. Grizzly aftermath of Kursk

Pic 21. Joseph Halpern formally dressed for his debut as a conductor

Pic 22. Joseph Halpern by poster for the jazz concert at the Uyghur Theatre

Pic 23. Raising the Russian flag over the Reichstag

Pic 24. The Mustang P-51 Allied fighter plane

Pic 25. Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill at the Potsdam Conference

Pic 26. Joseph Halpern escaped from Russians in a Tupolev TB-3 bomber

Pic 27. Joseph Halpern in post-war Berlin

Pic 28. Joseph’s first passionate love was Isabelle Perell

Pic 29. Head Nurse Clara Winters

Pic 30. Reverand Rotendorf

Pic 31. Dr. Fishbain

Pic 32. New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia at opening ceremony of the Herzl Orphanage

Pic 33. Head Nurse Clara Winters cuts the ribbon at Herzl Orphanage

Pic 34. The rambling building housing the Herzl Orphanage

Pic 35. Joseph Halpern sets up film projectors

Pic 36. The Hadassah Convoy Massacre

Pic 37. The Exodus 1947 transported 4,500 Jewish refugees

Pic 38. George Frederick Buzz Beurling known as The Falcon of Malta

Pic 39. American pilot Gideon Lichtman was first to shoot down an enemy plane

Pic 40. American Al Schwimmer (left) with David Ben-Gurion considered founder of the Israeli Air Force

Pic 41. Pilots called the jerry-rigged Avia S-199 Messerchitts.

Pic 42. The Yakovlev Yak-9

Pic 43. American Lou Lenart led the mission

Pic 44. Israeli Modi Alon (with sunglasses) the 101 Squadron’s first commander

Pic 45. Ezer Weizsman commanded the Israeli Air Force

Pic 46. South African volunteer fighter pilot Eddie Cohen crashed and burned

Pic 47. Milton Rubenfeld one of the five founding pilots of the Israeli Air Force

Pic 48. Insignia of the 101 Squadron

Pic 49. The flying force of the 101 Squadron

Pic 50. Joseph Halpern working on his doctorate in Munich

Pic 51. The Port of Bremerhaven where Joseph and Sophie quarantined

Pic 52. The MS Anna Salén brought Joseph and Sophie to Canada

Pic 53. Joseph’s father Bernard Halpern

Pic 54. Joseph’s mother Ethel Halpern

Pic 55. Heather Pigden when her and Joseph’s love affair began

Pic 56. Heather Pigden Halpern and Joseph Halpern at home in Ottawa

Foreword

Throughout our lives, my older brother David and I grew up hearing snippets of my father’s wartime experiences. Fascinated by these stories, I thought they should be documented and preserved. Although I continued performing with my blues band, I stopped my corporate work, sold my condo in Toronto and moved in with my father and stepmother in Ottawa.

While living with my father, I spent months interviewing him to ferret out the complete story. I talked with my father regularly over several months, recording Dad’s answers to systematic questions. At the end, the recordings traced my father’s life before, during, and after the war. These recordings and the resulting transcriptions formed the basis of my manuscript.

Just prior to World War II, my father, Joseph Israel Halpern was a bright, athletic schoolboy in Vladimir Volynsky, Poland, a half-Jewish community. He grew up in a privileged home against the backdrop of heated discussions of the Torah (with his grandfather, a popular and well-published rabbi), wonderful cooking, laughter, and strong family ties.

Then Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939. Within days, Soviet Russia invaded, and Poland disappeared. Its western region became part of Germany, and Dad’s Bug River area had been annexed to western Ukraine and had become Russian territory.

At first, Joseph and his friends reveled in newfound freedom: no more curfews, no more visible anti-Semitism, no more censure of unwed pregnancy (more comrades for the nation). Stalin’s Russia seemed like a welcome motherland.

Sixteen-year-old Joseph, and four other boys, were soon recruited by a Russian Air Force commander and began training in gliders. I supposed we were picked, because we all had good marks in school—especially in technical subjects like math and physics—and it was no coincidence that all five of us were in very good physical shape. Joseph said.

Dad turned his athleticism and intelligence into a brilliant career as a fighter pilot. He cheated death numerous times—by going for a smoke just before his comrades were felled by a bomb; by being able to fix motors when sent to Siberia (when he was not on the list); by shirking his status as Hero of the Soviet Union and holder of four Red Stars for bravery; and making his way to Canada and a new life. He survived by doing things of which he was not proud, while retaining his humanity and his loyalty to and love of family and his first love Isabelle.

By the end of the war, few Jewish people from Vladimir Volynsky survived: one of them was my dad. After a stint in a Displaced Persons’ Camp, during which he founded the Herzl Orphanage and volunteered as a fighter pilot in the 1948 Israeli-Arab war. Dad immigrated to Canada, entering the country via Pier 21 in Halifax and onward by train to Montreal where he later re-united with his father and mother he had presumed dead—and later settled in Ottawa/Hull. As a Canadian, my dad, Joseph Halpern became a noted member of the Jewish community. At his death August 15, 2011, the Ottawa Citizen ran an extended news/obituary, which was picked up by Postmedia newspapers across Canada.

Preface

In many ways, Joseph Halpern’s early life as one of the approximately 11,000-member Jewish community in Volodymyr-Volynsky (then part of Poland and renamed Vladimir Volynsky; today located in Ukraine) was typical.¹ He attended Hebrew school, lived in a kosher home, and observed Shabbat, Passover Seder, and other religious observances.

In another way, his life was unique. He lived with a grandfather who was a highly respected rabbi and scholar. The Gaon² and Tzadik,³ Reb Shlomo Halevi Halpern was a very famous writer, who travelled often as he was in great demand as a lecturer. Most of his books were destroyed during the war. The book that remains Sefer Chomas ha-Das veha-Emunah (The Bulwark of Religion and Faith) is a series of drushes (talks or sermons) calling believers to cling to the traditional life of faith and resist ever-encroaching modernity.

Joseph grew up against a backdrop of endless discussion and debate about the Torah, Talmud, and the life of faith going on in his grandfather’s salon (also filled with a notable religious library).

Scholars from near and far regularly crowded into his grandfather’s salon. He seemed to be one whose speaking from the heart attracted ordinary believers in addition to well-educated scholars. He was seen as tender, compassionate, and brimming with love for each individual Jew. Further, Reb Shlomo Halevi Halpern was a descendent of one of the most highly respected and widely studied medieval rabbinic scholars of Europe. He was known as the Mogen Avrohom (or Magen Avraham), the name of his most influential book. (Being known by the name of the most significant book was typical for highly respected rabbis). This book is a commentary which explains details of the most applicable part of the Shulchan Aruch, the most authoritative codification of Jewish religious law written in the mid-1500s.

His birth name was Avraham Abele ben Chaim HaLevi from Gombin, Poland, and he lived in the 1600s. Part of what made his commentary innovative was his incorporation of Polish customs—as a healthy Jewish community existed in Poland for over 1,000 years. In short, Joseph’s grandfather descended from one of the mostly highly respected and widely studied medieval rabbinic scholars in Europe.

Warsaw, where Reb Shlomo Halevi Halpern had lived and worked for many years, was a citadel of Jewish life and learning for centuries. Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass, November 9-10, 1939), the 1939 Nazi pogrom against the Jews began and shattered this long cultural history. That night hundreds were killed, another 600 people committed suicide, and 30,000 men were sent to concentration camps. This event is viewed as the prelude to the Nazis’ Final Solution—the murder of over 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.

Halperns come from a long line of scholars and rabbis said to be direct descendants of King David. My great grandfather, Reb Schlomo Halevi Halpern, is one of those scholars and is legendary in the Jewish community for the creation of a new way of thinking (meta-learning)⁴ for Hebrew scholars. The Warsaw of his day abounded with Jewish learning; with thousands of synagogues and centers for Torah teaching and learning, scholars young and old would fill those centers to study the word of God. At the close of business merchants and artisans would join the crowds in those centers and study into the evening hours. Only a select few could earn the recognition of the community. Rabbi Halpern enjoyed the esteem of those renowned sages and men of wisdom. He was constantly encouraged to spread his teachings and eventually became known as Reb Schloma’leh Hamalach (translated Reb Schlomo the angel"). Reb Schlomo traveled by train across Europe and would be greeted at each stop by crowds of eager fans anticipating his arrival. Those fans would listen intently to every word Reb Schlomo would say, often utilizing humor. In a way, he was like a comedian/scholar on tour.

Rabbi Schlomo Halevi Halpern

Prologue

When Joseph ran home after school, cheeks pink with fresh air tinged by the moisture of the nearby Bug River, he went to a very old house. A C-shaped structure that had withstood a century, it had undergone various modifications over the years. The main entrance sat in the centre of the two wings on a property 700 metres wide and 800 metres deep, including the border of the river. Each side of the house had a path down to the river.

The house was built by Joseph’s great-grandfather. It was very light inside: outside walls had nearly floor to ceiling windows, some with window seats. Many skylights added to the abundance of natural light. Built on an angle, the skylights shed snow easily.

Surrounded by an iron fence, at the front near the road, was the main gate which had a bell that when rung, could be heard from anywhere in the house. Still, the gate was seldom locked, and people went in and out freely.

A 30-metre stone walkway led to the front door, surrounded by a garden with an abundance of flowers and trees, places to sit, and a few gazebos made of wood, iron, and other materials. People could sit on benches and enjoy different fruit trees and shrubs with the various berries: currants, red berries, and blueberries. There were roses, jasmines, lilacs, ark blue flowers that smelled good in the dark. Some just looked nice.

The gate opened to a circular driveway leading to the front door, although there were no cars (just one taxi in town), there were many horse-drawn carriages. People walked up a few steps to a white door—quite wide—like French doors, with coloured leaded glass.

Visitors rang a bell to enter, and whoever heard it went quickly to open it. There was a man who looked after the horses and kept an eye on the gate, a butler, and other household help. At that time, the family was considered wealthy and therefore had a responsibility to provide employment for others.

Guests entered a foyer, with benches where they could sit to remove galoshes and hang up outdoor clothing. When they were ready to leave, their clothing was clean and fresh, waiting for them. Cleaning up guests’ soiled clothing was a practice of generosity central to Judaism.

From the foyer—up just a few steps—people entered the salon, a kind of living room, on the right. It had a grand piano and generous seating and then led through a spacious archway (which could be blocked off by a large velvet drape) to a large dining room. There, up to 24 people could be seated, for holiday gatherings and entertaining family and friends. A door connected it to the huge square kitchen (15x15 metres).

A spiral stairway led to upstairs, where there were eight bedrooms. Many people stayed over—relatives and business associates—in addition to all the family. The stairs were highly waxed and polished hardwood gleaming dark red, with carpet runners wired into place. Joseph’s bedroom was simple: 5x4 metres, with a desk facing the window, a small worktable, a few shelves, and a rope outside that he used to leave the house unseen. Still higher was an attic full of stuff that Joseph enjoyed browsing through—and a place with a good view of the surroundings and of the horses grazing below.

The Rabbi’s Salon

On the main floor on the left was a salon used by Joseph’s paternal grandfather, Rabbi Shlomo Halevi Halpern. Snippets of discussion and debate about the Torah, Talmud, and the life of faith were a regular feature of home life. Scholars came from distances near and far to sit with the rabbi, a prolific writer and teacher, and the room was full of religious books, in addition to a large, less specialized library.

From Warsaw to the Countryside

Joseph’s parents married in the early 1920s and lived in Warsaw in his grandparents’ home, where Joseph was born in 1923.

Soon after Joseph’s birth, his father, Bernard Halpern received a 10-year sentence for Marxist activities. Joseph and his mother, Ethel Halpern moved in with his maternal grandparents in Vladimir Volynsky: Reb Schlomo and his wife Ester Halpern joined them shortly afterwards. (It was only about five hours away by train from where Bernard Halpern was held, rather than the eight to nine hours from Warsaw). Joseph’s mother visited each month and Joseph went once a year. Unlike the usual prison, it was rather resort-like—although the detainees had to pay for their accommodations. The point was to isolate such dissidents in order to keep others from succumbing to the disease of their thinking.

At Home on the Estate

Basically, Joseph’s maternal grandmother, Chaya Spizman ran the house, and his mother kept the books for the family import-export business. Being very fashionable, his maternal grandmother, and his mother, relied on two seamstresses for their clothing. Using French magazines that came four times a year, they designed, measured, and sewed all their clothes, dresses, and underwear. Several women worked in the home: cleaning, cooking, looking after clothing and linens. A man looked after the stoves, heating, heavy cleaning, and yard work. His grandfather, David-Lazar Spizman had a driver. His uncle Leon Spizman lived with them until he married and moved out. Using their contacts with French and German companies, they imported steel and machinery for small factories and the military. As owners of a number of woodlots, they also had people cutting and supplying wood to merchants, who in turn produced boards as building materials.

It was a kosher home—separate dishes for Passover, separate dishes for milk and for meat, and meat and milk never mixed. They slaughtered their own chickens, bought meat from a