LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Leslie Howard: England
built 805 days ago
Alan's uncle, Leslie Howard, the film star and matinee idol. Leslie started life as Leslie Steiner, son of a Hungarian-Jewish father, Ferdinand (Frank) Steiner, who came to England as an emigre and became a British subject, and Lilian Blumberg, daughter of Charles Blumberg, a barrister. She married Frank against her parent's wishes. After the birth of Leslie in 1893, the young couple went to Vienna, where they spent the next few years. As the middle class Blumbergs became reconciled to the marriage, Frank and Lilian moved back to England, and settled in London. Leslie was encouraged in amateur acting by his mother, but on his father's insistence took a steady and safe job as a bank clerk.
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Howard was flying from Portela (Lisbon), Portugal back home to England on a regularly scheduled flight that did not pass over what would commonly be referred to as a war zone. The Luftwaffe records indicate that the Staffel was sent beyond its normal patrol area to intercept and shoot down the airliner, even though this flight had never before been disrupted. There were about fourteen other passengers, most of them either British executives with corporate ties in Portugal, or various British comparatively lower echelon government functionaries. There were ... two or three children, the offspring of British military personnel. The DC-3 was attacked by eight German JU-88s, despite the fact that Luftwaffe patrols in the nearest normal vicinity usually consisted of single planes. According to German documents, the plane was shot down at longitude 10.15 West, latitude 46.07 North, some 500 miles from Bordeaux, France.
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Als in Europa der Zweite Weltkrieg ausbrach, kehrte Howard nach England zurück. Er nahm auf zahlreichen Unterhaltungsveranstaltungen für die britischen Soldaten an der Front teil. Bei einem Rückflug von Lissabon nach London wurde sein Flugzeug von der Deutschen Luftwaffe im Golf von Biscaya abgeschossen; der deutsche Geheimdienst hatte irrtümlicherweise angenommen, dass sich Winston Churchill in der zivilen Maschine befand. Auch an Bord war der aus Deutschland vertriebene Unternehmer Wilfried Israel, der den Nazis ein Dorn im Auge war, da er, noch bis 1938 Eigentümer des prominenten Berliner Kaufhauses N.Israel (Ecke Königsstraße-Spandauer Straße, gegenüber dem sog. Roten Rathaus) war [Quelle: Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge (1972), S. 307]. Aus Großbritannien half er hunderten von Deutschen, die als Juden verfolgt wurden, ins Ausland zu gelangen [Quelle: Irene Guenther, Nazi 'Chic'?
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[W]ar clouds were gathering over England and Leslie devoted all his energy on behalf of the war effort. He directed films, wrote articles and made radio broadcasts. In 1943 he journeyed to Portugal on a lecture tour for the British government. The Germans believed that his plane carried Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The British Overseas Airways plane was blasted our of the sky killing everyone on board. He was 53.
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