Canadian group’s decision to honour Nazi pilot at women’s aviation event draws fire

Calgary Herald reports:

A Canadian organization that promotes women in aviation is facing criticism from a Jewish rights group and questions from sponsors after deciding this year to honour a pioneering helicopter pilot who was also a notorious Nazi.

“Let’s Swirl. 80 Years of Female Helicopter Pilots,” reads the theme for this year’s Women of Aviation Worldwide Week. “Hanna Reitsch, first woman to pilot a helicopter, 1937.”

The short biography on the event’s website mentions that Reitsch, who died in 1979, became a test pilot in Germany in 1937, flew an Fa 61 helicopter that year, and in later life established gliding schools in India and Ghana.

But it leaves out the war years of 1939-45, when Reitsch was a Luftwaffe test pilot and personal favourite of Adolf Hitler, who awarded her the Iron Cross for bravery.

Though she was the first woman to pilot a helicopter, her most famous flight may have been a trip in the final days of the Second World War, when she came under Red Army fire as she landed in the heart of Berlin on a mission to take the new head of the Luftwaffe, Robert Ritter von Greim, to Hitler’s bunker.

She spent two days inside the bunker before flying out with von Greim and was one of the last people to see Hitler alive before he killed himself.

Imagine that.