Heinz Steinitz
Heinz Steinitz was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) on April 26, 1909, to Walter Steinitz (1882-1963), a cardiologist and zoologist, and Marta Schindler Steinitz (1885-1926). He grew up in Breslau and was greatly inspired by his father to study science and to be an active Zionist. He studied medicine from 1927-1933 in the universities of Breslau, Freiburg and Berlin. Although he passed the Medical Board examination in 1933, and would have started work in a hospital in Berlin and in the Jewish hospital in Breslau, he was prohibited from practicing by the Nazi regime which came to power that same year. Together with his wife Ruth Aber Steinitz (1907-1995), a medical student as well, he left Germany in 1933 and immigrated to Palestine.
Ralph Izzard
Izzard also participated in the creation of a plan (code named Operation Ruthless), the objective of which was to obtain German Naval Enigma documentation to aid British Intelligence in the decryption of secret German communications. The plan consisted of crashing a captured German aeroplane into the English Channel where the British crew, dressed in Luftwaffe uniforms, would be rescued by a German patrol boat. The "survivors" would then kill the German crew, hijack the ship, and confiscate the secret Enigma documents. Much to the annoyance of codebreakers at Bletchley Park, the operation was scrapped. In a BBC Radio 4 program called "The Bond Correspondence" broadcast on 24 May 2008, Lucy Fleming, the niece of Ian Fleming, stated that the plan was cancelled because the Royal Air Force concluded that a downed Heinkel bomber dropped into the English Channel would sink rather than float, posing too great a danger to the lives of British operatives.Izzard was married to Ellen Schmidt-Klewitz from 1931-1946 with whom he had a daughter, Christina. Izzard had a son with the German actress Marianne Hoppe, Benedikt Hoppe being born in 1946. He was married to Molly Crutchleigh-FitzPatrick from 1947 to 1992 with whom he had two daughters and two sons, Miles, Anthea, Sabrina and Sebastian.