Witness to history

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 2nd. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a journalist with more than a century of perspective.

AUDIO: And now, here is Walter Bingham / I am Walter Bingham. And it’s my pleasure to have your company for the next hour…

Born Wolfgang Billig, Walter Bingham is a survivor of Nazi Germany and a frontline veteran of WWII.

AUDIO: The subject matter discussed here is of extreme importance to the future of our country…

He’s also 102 years old, and until recently, he hosted the weekly Walter’s World on Israel National radio, and The Walter Bingham File on Israel Newstalk Radio. He also writes opinion pieces on current events for the Jerusalem Post.

That earned him recognition from Guinness as the World’s Oldest Journalist.

REICHARD: Bingham was born into a Jewish family three years before Hitler came to power. During that time, the German economy was in shambles. The Versailles Treaty left 6 million men unemployed; many were disillusioned soldiers.

After Hitler was elected, Bingham suffered the consequences of Nazi anti-Semitism in school, so he began attending a school started by the Jewish community.

BINGHAM: They needed teachers. They had the choice of the best professors, the finest curriculum... book keeping, physics, chemistry…

As a nine-year-old boy he witnessed a book-burning in his hometown of Karlsruhe. Books by or about Jews were blacklisted and burned. Libraries and private citizens handed over their forbidden books. 

The atmosphere was delirious, people were singing and throwing books into the fire.

BINGHAM: A German novelist—Heinrich Heine—said 80-something years before that book burning: “If they burn books today, they will burn people tomorrow.”

Bingham received an additional year of education at a local school for Jewish children in Mannheim. During that time, his father was arrested and sent to Poland. After the war, Bingham found out he had lived in pigsties and cowsheds until he was eventually sent to the Warsaw ghetto, where his father died from sickness.

BINGHAM: One morning, I noticed something was wrong, something was in the air, something was wrong. And I walked towards it and I saw more people and commotions. And I got to the synagogue and it was Kristallnacht.

EICHER: Kristallnacht, the night of November 9th, 1938, when Nazi mobs unleashed violence on the Jewish community, burning more than 14-hundred synagogues, vandalizing thousands of Jewish businesses and homes, killing 91 Jewish people.

That night, Bingham called his mother and said: “I want to come home.”

It was in this hostile environment that Jewish organizations began contacting charities in the UK:

BINGHAM: Do something for our children. Please, can you help our children?

From December 1938, after Kristallnacht until the war broke out, 10,000 Jewish children went to England with the ‘Kindertransport.’ At 15 years old, Bingham was one of the oldest.

He tried immigrating to Palestine, but after the British government denied that request, Bingham enlisted in the British army to help fight Nazi Germany. To prevent being discovered as a Jew, he changed his name.

The next day, it was time for a roll call:

BINGHAM: He called, “Driver! Driver Smith, Sir! Driver Brown, Sir! Driver Bingham!” No answer. “Driver Bingham!” No answer. And then, excuse the language, he pointed at me with a smirk and he said, “Isn’t your bloody name, Bingham?!”

REICHARD: In June 1944, he landed on the beaches of Normandy as an ambulance driver and saved many lives. For his extraordinary action, he was awarded the Military Medal for bravery in the field by King George VI. 

Towards the end of the war, he was sent back to London to train as an intelligence officer:

BINGHAM: You immerse yourself in your work...and my work was intelligence work. And I wanted to do the best I could.

At 80 years old, Bingham immigrated to Israel. He told the IDF he wanted to help defend his new homeland:

BINGHAM: “I’m an experienced soldier,” ... but they wouldn’t take me.

It’s the first time he feels at home in a country.

BINGHAM: Now, when I leave this country, and after one week, Jerusalem is like a magnet for me. A magnet; it pulls me back.

EICHER: On October 8th, 2023, a day after the Hamas invasion into the southern Israeli border communities, he went to Germany to recreate the Kindertransport. He left with a very heavy heart.

BINGHAM: In Amsterdam, we couldn’t get out of the railway station because there was a demo, Free Palestine. We had to wait, so we experienced that.

Bingham compares the current climate with the pre-war period he lived through.

BINGHAM: I used to say we live in an era equivalent to the 1930s. And I've changed it. We live in an era now absolutely equivalent to 1938: burning of synagogues, attacks on Jews in the street. 

I am advocating to Jews in the world, come here while you still can with all your possessions. Don't wait before you have to run away with only a small suitcase like I did.

Bingham’s advice for the younger generation:

BINGHAM: Look, never forget. You can’t forget. But learn from the past. Remember the past, but learn from the past. And if you don’t know your past, you will never understand your life today and your future.

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