By any measure, Andrew Wiseman (born Weizman) is a lucky man. The only
son of a Polish father and an American mother, Andy was born and grew up
in Berlin, just as Adolf Hitler was coming to power. As a Jew educated
at the famous Werner Siemens Real Gymnasium in Schoneberg, he left only
months before his school was closed down and fled with his family to
Poland, one step ahead of the Nazi persecution that was to follow and
later take the life of his father.
From Poland he again fled to England, this time without his parents,
arriving as a 16-year-old with little or no grasp of English. After a
crash course in the language, he avoided being called up into the Polish
army in exile thanks to the timely intervention of no less a man than
General Sikorski himself, to enlist in the RAF to train initially as a
pilot and then as an air bomber in South Africa.
On his return to the UK he was posted to an all-Australian Squadron (466
Squadron) equipped with the Handley Page Halifax. After his first
operation in which he was nearly shot down, Andrew survived a handful of
eventful trips before falling victim to one of the Luftwaffe's top night
fighter pilots and landing in France.
Briefly on the run he was betrayed and captured, spending the next 12
months as a prisoner of war, using his knowledge of Russian, Polish and
German to act as one of the principal camp interpreters, and working as
a 'scrounger' for the 'X' committee of escapers. Moved from camp to
camp, he was one of those forced into the 'Long March' by the Germans
attempting to escape the Russian advance, and afterwards played a key
role in avoiding the potential bloodshed that threatened when the
Russians refused to allow the British and Norwegian prisoners to return
home - a role for which he was later recognized by the King of Norway.
Upon his release, Andy used his language skills to work with the BBC
monitoring service and later, BBC Television as a producer, sharing many
adventures with the great broadcasters of their time, including David
Dimbleby and Raymond Baxter.
