David L. Koren

The Berlin Airlift of 1948 provided the model for the Biafran Airlift of 1968. There are no other examples in history of such massive humanitarian aid delivered by aircraft. The Berlin Airlift was a military operation; the Biafran Airlift was a church operation. German churches, together with Nordic churches in a group called Nordchurchaid, started and operated the airlift using antiquated aircraft dodging Nigerian Mig fighters and bombers. “Far Away in the Sky” is my story of the airlift- my work with Nordchurchaid and the German organization, Das Diakonische Werk.

My mother told me to write this book. She is 95 years old, and she handed me a bundle of letters that I had sent her from Africa 50 years ago. She said, "You write very well, and you need to tell this story." I served in the United States Peace Corps in Nigeria in 1964, 1965, and 1966, and I wrote home about it. Since we had no instantaneous electronic communications back then, letters contained a lot of detail and feeling.

In 1968 I went back there to my one-time home in Eastern Nigeria-then called Biafra-because a war had broken out. People were starving by the millions. International church groups started a massive humanitarian airlift of food and medicine. UNICEF recruited me to help unload the planes in Biafra. Again, I wrote letters home, but I also made dozens of audio tapes with amazing detail, capturing the history of that time.

I still have the tapes and the letters my mother gave me and my pictures and many documents from the airlift. From them I wrote the book, "Far Away in the Sky."

Out of great respect, I wrote it for my mother.