Holocaust Survivor Celebrates His Centennial Skydiving Over the Dead Sea

The Holocaust survivor, journalist, and actor Walter Bingham celebrated his 100th birthday last week with a skydive over the Dead Sea. Bingham jumped from 15,000 feet, free-falling in tandem with instructors at the Bar Yehuda Airfield near Masada. Walter’s jump lasted about a minute and half as he flew at 124 mph over the Dead Sea and the Judean Hills.

For the jump, Bingham wore a special shirt showing his support for Israel’s soldiers that said: Thank You IDF. In 2018, Bingham became the oldest person to skydive in Israel and for his 100th birthday he wanted to celebrate by skydiving again, thanking the IDF and seeing the land that he loves. “As I celebrate today,” Walter said, “I pray for the State of Israel and the Jewish people.”

In an interview with the March of the Living last year, Walter described growing up in Germany and witnessing the burning of the synagogues and Jewish books on the night of Kristallnacht in 1933. “I was walking to the synagogue when I smelled the burning. I saw the crowds standing around the fire. Fourteen hundred synagogues burnt that night. I remember as if it were yesterday running onto the 322 diesel train that afternoon. My short-term memory isn’t great anymore but I remember that train. And I remember the fear as I tried to get home.”

Walter returned home that night and was sent a few months later to England on the kindertransport. He clearly remembers the moment when he boarded the train to England: “I was 15 so I knew why I was going. But imagine you take your only child to a train to send them far away moments before a world war is beginning. There were small children with me, some of them not more than four years old calling out for their mothers who were standing on the train platform. They kept shouting for their mothers to come with them. They thought they were being punished.”

Later in England, Walter fought in the British army and was awarded medals of honor for his bravery during the war in which he fought on the front line in the Normandy landings in 1944. During a mission, Walter’s ambulance was destroyed by German fire, killing an officer and wounding another. Walter ran through the fire and gunfire to rescue wounded soldiers.

Because he was a native German speaker, Walter was transferred to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force to analyze captured German documents. He worked in counter-intelligence in occupied Germany where he helped to identify Nazi officers who were trying to hide their former positions. Walter interrogated the former Nazi foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, who denied any knowledge of the final solution or the Holocaust.

“I spoke to Ribbentrop. He was good-looking and spoke excellent English. He had the cheek to say he knew nothing about the destruction of the Jews. He was the first to be hanged.”

Walter was miraculously reunited with his mother after the war, and seeing her seven years after she sent him on a train to England remains his most meaningful memory to this day. “We each didn’t know if the other was alive all those years.” Walter said in an interview with Yad Sarah. Because his father was killed in the Holocaust, until that moment Walter did not know if he had any family at all remaining.

Walter Bingham (Credit: Sam Churchill)

In England, Walter married and went on to have a distinguished career as a British journalist and as an actor, appearing most famously as a wizard in the Harry Potter movies. At age 80, in 2004, Walter made aliyah, joining his daughter, grandchildren and great grandchildren living in Israel. He applied for a job at radio station Kol Israel but was turned down because of his age. He was subsequently hired by Israel National News and since 2004, he has hosted “Walter’s World” a weekly radio program. In 2016, Walter began hosting The Walter Bingham File on Israel News Talk Radio and contributed regularly to the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Report. He also holds two Guinness World Records, for being the oldest living journalist and the oldest radio talk show host. Today Walter still produces two weekly radio shows from his home in Jerusalem, speaks about the Holocaust all over the world and attends press conferences to advocate for Israel.

When asked in the interview with the March of the Living if he is concerned with the antisemitism we are seeing today, Walter answered: “We are living today in times like the 1930s. I really believe that the only difference is that we have the state of Israel. But everything else, the signs are exactly as they were. We are absolutely today in the 1930s, and it is only because we have, thank God, the state of Israel, which is stronger than most people think.”

Soon after the October 7th attacks, Walter traveled with his daughter Sonja for a reenactment of the Kindertransport which saved 10,000 Jewish children from the Nazis. They traveled from Israel to Germany, Holland and then to England, retracing Walter’s steps from 1939. Tears welled up in Walter’s eyes at the port in Holland as he remembered saying good-bye to Europe so many years ago and prayed for the hundreds of Israeli hostages brutally murdered and kidnapped only days before from their homes. “I could never have imagined that at the age of 100 I would be a witness to the horrific pogrom against the Jews that took place on October 7th and the terrifying resurgence of antisemitism since.”

It was an exhilarating and unforgettable experience" (Photo Credit: Go Jump)

Nevertheless, on his birthday Walter insisted that his cake say “until 180” instead of the traditional “until 120” because at 100, he still believes there is still so much he can do to help Israel and the Jewish people. “There is still so much work that has to be done.”

As a pilot, Walter once flew his plane solo from England to Israel. With tears running down his cheeks, he circled over Jerusalem, filled with gratitude and awe that he had reached this moment in his life.

Watching Walter jump out of a plane over the Dead Sea on his 100th birthday last week redefines the word impossible for all of us as we approach the new year. So many of us have wells of untapped potential within us; perhaps we are just waiting for the right moment to begin. But the inspiring story of Walter’s life brings us to the ultimate question we need to each ask ourselves as the new year begins: What are we waiting for?