Walter Bingham is officially the world’s oldest active journalist!
By Nosson Shulman: Licensed Tour Guide of VIP Israel Tours & Authentic Virtual Tours (click here to check out his free trailer videos)
In 2004 Walter Bingham, a Torah observant British Jew and well-known journalist who had just made Aliyah (immigrated to Israel), went to apply for a job with a well-known radio station. Despite his resume spanning half a century, they said he wasn’t right for the job. The reason? He was 80 years old. Not to be discouraged, he set out to prove that he could still get the job done. A few weeks later, he landed a job with Israel National Radio. Now at age 97, he has two popular radio shows, and still writes articles regularly for the Jerusalem Post!
Born in Germany in 1924 just before the rise of the Hitler, יש”ו, in 1938 he fled to England on the famous Kindertransport program, where England allowed 10,000 child refugees to enter without their parents. Very few of those kids ever saw their parents again, though his mother survived and joined him after the war (his father died in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943).
In 1944, Walter joined the British Army and stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. After the war, he worked in intelligence where he interrogated high level Nazi War Criminals to collect evidence against them for the infamous Nuremberg trials. One of the people he interviewed was German foreign minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop who denied all knowledge of the Holocaust (In the trials he was the first German to be convicted, sentenced to death, and eventually hung).
Remaining in England he found a radio job, eventually also branching out into journalism. In his spare time, he earned degrees in Political Science and Philosophy, got his pilot’s license, and even modeled! He also acted in small parts in movies, including two of the Harry Potter movies playing a wizard. In 2018, he was awarded the French Legion of Honor, France’s highest honor.
When his wife passed away, he decided to live his dream and make Aliyah. He was later joined by his daughter, now in her 70s, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Though Walter Bingham was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s oldest active journalist, it was not the first time he broke a record. In 2017, he was recognized as the world’s oldest radio host, and in 2018 he became the oldest Israeli to skydive (something which he says he plans to do again at 100)!
When asked how he feels at his age, he answers, “On a good day, I feel like I’m 40, on a bad day 50”!
Nosson Shulman is a journalist and Licensed Tour Guide in Israel specializing in Biblical tours. To allow tourists to experience Israel during the Corona era, he created the new hit Israel tour video series which brings Israel to the home of viewers by simulating actual tours. To check out his free sneak preview tour videos, click here
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