Jewish WW II pilot Si Spiegel pioneered the modern artificial Christmas tree

Si Spiegel, a Jewish fighter pilot during the Second World War, did not invent the artificial Christmas tree. But he is, in large part, responsible for the way it stands beneath the ornaments and tinsel in so many homes today.

"The idea of why can't an artificial tree look like a real tree is a real Si Spiegel achievement," Laurie Gwen Shapiro, a journalist and author who wrote about Speigel for the New York Times, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

Spiegel died last January at the age of 99, after what his friends and family describe as a remarkable life that saw him stand up to the Nazis, survive a crash landing in Soviet-occupied Poland, and go on to found a massively successful tree-making business, despite facing antisemitism and other obstacles at home after the war. 

"He deeply believed that if you have your life, then you have an opportunity to make something of it, no matter what your current circumstance," his granddaughter, Maya Ono, told CBC.

Spiegel grew up in a Jewish family in New York City's Borough Park, and in his teens moved to Greenwich Village where his father ran a laundry.

When he was 17 years old, he enlisted in the U.S. army to fight the Nazis.

He flew dozens of missions on his B-17 bomber aircraft, one of the most dangerous tasks for an American soldier, and at one point was declared missing in action. But he found his way back, and he returned to the United States as a first lieutenant at the age of 21. 

He was a highly-decorated pilot and one of the youngest veterans of the Second World War, but Shapiro said Spiegel could not advance as a pilot due to antisemitism in the U.S. military.

Getting an education, Ono says, also proved challenging.

"He tried to go to college, but he couldn't," she said. "He was later, in his 60s, diagnosed with PTSD, but he didn't know that at the time. He just knew that he had lived so much more life than his peers in college going to classes who didn't go through the experience of fighting a war."

So he went back to work at a local machine shop, and ended up at the American Brush Machinery Company, a factory that produced brushes for a variety of purposes, including women's hair rollers. 

The company also made fake Christmas trees, but Shapiro says they were "soulless looking" and sold poorly.  

Spiegel, however, used his machinist skills to develop machines that could make fake trees with natural-looking needles and branches that could adjust to resemble birch or fir, as well as "easily detachable limb groupings for quick setup."

He later established the Hudson Valley Tree Company and produced 80,000 artificial Christmas trees per year. He went on to sell the company in 1992 for $12 million US — an especially notable achievement given he'd grown up in poverty, said Shapiro.

"I think, for him, it was never about the tree," Ono said. "He was very proud of the business that he built, and he was very proud of the way that he treated his employees."

He was also very proud of his family, Shapiro says, especially his three children, his grandchildren and his second wife, Motoko Ikeda, the "love of his life."

"But what he really wanted to talk to me about," Shapiro said, "was the war."

Trading in his wrench for wings

As a Jewish man, Spiegel wanted to contribute to the fight against the extermination of Jewish people during the Second World War. He began his career in the army as a mechanic, but felt he wasn't doing enough.

"What he told me was, how was he going to fight Hitler with a wrench?" Shapiro said.

Ono described her grandfather as a man who always carried strength of his convictions, both during and after the war.

"He was never crippled, you know, by the weight of the world to the point of inaction," she said.

He was stationed at Roosevelt Field on Long Island, N.Y., when he got into a conversation with a pilot while fixing a plane, said Shapiro.

"That pilot told Spiegel to 'go about two miles to Mitchell Field and see if they'll take you.'"

While it was uncommon for a Jewish person to become a pilot, going to this lesser known facility to sign up instead of the more popular Times Square worked in Spiegel's favour. 

"He was already in uniform because he was a mechanic, and there were only two people that showed up that day and the other one had bad eyesight and [Spiegel] had perfect vision."

Spiegel became an aviation cadet and travelled across the states to learn Morse code, navigation and primary training. He learned barrel rolls and loops. Then, he received his wings.

Missing in action

Spiegel flew 35 missions as a B-17 bomber pilot — but his 33rd mission was one of the most memorable.

It began when the pilots and their crews were told they were going to bomb Berlin headquarters, said Shapiro. But Spiegel had a malfunction in one engine, then lost his second engine to flak. With ammunition hitting the plane and gas leaking, he couldn't keep up with the formation. Only halfway to their destination, he didn't have enough gas in the tank.

"He asked his navigator, Ray Patoolski, to get them to Poland, where there had been Russian troops who had already passed Warsaw. And he thought that maybe they would be safe if they got past [Soviet] lines and they landed on basically this Polish field. And it was quite a scene," Shapiro said.

Soon, they found out that another American crew flying a B-17 had landed in a field a few kilometres away.

Spiegel and the other pilot, George Ruckman, thought they were going to get out within a couple of days, but no one knew where they were. 

"The [Soviet] officers weren't telling anyone," Shapiro said. "They saw a value in having these Americans there." 

The Americans were not their prisoners, but they were not allowed to leave until Moscow approved. Plus, they had no means to leave either.

So the two pilots cracked a plan, and they combined the parts on their planes without anyone noticing, to create a "Frankenstein vehicle of aircraft."

"One pilot would go out drinking with the Russian officers watching them while the other crew was working on it. And then the other team would go out drinking and eventually they were doing these fixes and they put together this plane," Shapiro said.

Ono says her grandfather was the only crew member who could really communicate with the Soviet troops by speaking Yiddish — something he hadn't done since childhood. 

"He was surprised, in the moment of, like, life or death survival, what comes back to you," she said.

After several months, the two B-17 bomber crews escaped Poland on St. Patrick's Day in 1945. They were 19 men total, on a plane that usually held 10 to 13 people. After eight hours in flight, they landed at an allied base in Foggia, Italy.

"People were shocked," Shapiro said. "They were supposed to be dead."

When Spiegel returned to New York, he was a war hero. But he told Shapiro that when he tried to find work as a commercial pilot, nobody would hire him because he was Jewish.

Ruckman, the other pilot, got promoted, while Spiegel wasn't even allowed in the famous Wings Club, Shapiro said. 

He was among the last surviving American B-17 pilots of the Second World War.

Shapiro said she believes Spiegel's dual legacy would not have been as well remembered if she hadn't published a feature about him in the Times years earlier.

"There was a very large obituary that ran in the New York Times. And, of course, I felt this wonderful pride knowing that he probably wouldn't have gotten an obituary if I hadn't written that article," she said.

Ono, however, says her grandfather's legacy goes far beyond one article, noting he's been featured in news articles, web videos and military histories for decades.

She, herself, has spent many hours interviewing her grandfather with the goal of documenting his life, a process she has begun on her newsletter, The Spiegel Files.

"His life was so vast, it's like, unfathomable," she said.