In the 1930’s the above traffic situation occurred frequently in the canals of Amsterdam: the Fokker Aircraft factory was located in Amsterdam North, a residential and industrial section of town without an airfield, while Schiphol Airport was to the south of the city, on the bottom of a reclaimed lake. For flight tests newly built Fokkers had to be transported through the wondrous and winding canals of the old city. Sometimes, after heavy rainfall, Schiphol was too marshy and flight tests had to be relocated to Welschap, near Eindhoven, a distance of 70 miles or so to the south.

You can read about the tests at Welschap in the revised ‘album’ of Erich Schatzki’s life, when you click here:  alifeofflight2.pdf

Erich Schatzki loved the new country that he had settled in for a short interval of time. Relentlessly moved on by the unfolding of history, events took him eventually to the United States and then to Israel and back again to the USA – like a pendulum, going multiple times back and forth.

For the new data which I was able to add to the earlier description of Schatzki’s life, I am indebted to my old friend Wim Snieder, the writer of the only comprehensive bibliography of Dutch aviation history: “In Vogelvlucht” / Geannoteerde bibliografie over de Nederlandse luchtvaart, vanaf 1784. Uitgever; Canaletto/Repro Holland; 486 pages, ISBN 9789064697340

As a little boy in Holland I was enraptured by the original shape of the Fokker G-1 fighting plane of 1939. A few years later I became a (small) close witness to the atrocities of the war, as some of my schoolmates and good neighbors in the street where I lived in Amsterdam were deported because they were Jews. (They never returned.)

While living now in California and enjoying my own ‘Indian Summer’, I found on the web the designer of the G-1, Erich Schatzki. I also learned that he was a Jewish exile and that he and his family had been on the run for the Nazi’s since 1934. I set out to find more facts about his life.
I have collected these in an ‘Album’, a collection of factual items and a description of some of the fascinating people that he met in his long, adventurous life.

I have added my findings in a new file on my website today. If anybody can tell me more, or if somebody wants to correct an error, please leave a note!