The Berlin Airlift, the Candy Bomber, and I

In 1948, Stalin challenged the West to a showdown between communism and democracy.  By blocking all land access routes to the Western Zones of Berlin, Stalin took 2.3 million Berliners hostage - doomed to starve to death unless the West surrendered their territory to the Soviets.  For 11 months the Allies airlifted billions of pounds of supplies to Berlin, thus sparing West Berlin from Soviet occupation.  By treating the hungry children of West Berlin to candy, Lt. Hal Halverson, turned former enemies to friends and the airlift to a joint venture.  He was known as the Candy Bomber.

When WWII broke out in 1939, Gisela Zebroski’s privileged childhood came to an abrupt end. The Soviet Union took over Latvia, the country of her birth. Her parents fled to Germany then on to Poland, Austria, and eventually to the US in 1954 where she married, went to college, and became a writer and a novelist.

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