A famous Jewish pilot's vintage plane could be scrapped. This man is on a mission to save it

Louis Helbig, of Sydney, N.S., has been racing against time trying to find a solution and a good home for what he describes as the Trans-Atlantic Luscombe. The vintage aircraft, built in 1948, was once owned by a famous Jewish watchmaker named Peter Gluckmann, who had fled Hitler's Germany in 1939 to England as teenager with his family. He then who moved to the U.S. after the Holocaust, learned to fly, and in 1953, became the first person to ever successfully cross the North Atlantic, solo, in such a tiny plane. Gluckmann attempted the voyage because he wanted to see his parents again, and also to visit his family’s lost home in Berlin. Gluckmann would set more flying records in the next few years until he disappeared into the Pacific in a different airplane, during a round-the-world attempt in 1960. Louis Helbig bought the Luscombe in 2013 and has been flying it himself to do aerial photography. It was damaged in an accident this past summer, and now Helbig says his insurance company needs a decision by Oct. 31 or it will deem the plucky two-seater a write off and likely send it to be scrapped. Helbig believes Gluckmann’s story of survival and Jewish history is equally as important as the plane’s significance. He hopes a museum will take it, display it, and tell the remarkable tale before it’s too late. He’s also motivated by what he’s discovered about his own family’s wartime history: to his horror, he learned that his German grandfather was a proud brownshirt with Hitler’s Nazi regime. Louis Helbig joins host Ellin Bessner on today’s episode of The CJN’s “North Star” podcast.

Related links

• Learn more about Louis Helbig’s 1948-built Luscombe aircraft and see photos of the tiny plane once owned by Peter Gluckmann, a German Jewish Holocaust survivor and later amateur pilot who made record-setting flights beginning in 1953. 
• Read about Louis Helbig’s environmental photography projects about the St. Lawrence Seaway and also the Alberta Tar Sands.

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
• Production team: Andrea Varsany (producer), Zachary Judah Kauffman (senior producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Bret Higgins

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