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Born in what is now the Czech Republic, Derickson and her parents were expelled to East Germany in 1945. The family later escaped to West Germany, and Uli made it to the United States in 1967, where she became a flight attendant for TWA. In 1985, on Flight 847 between Athens and Rome, her plane was hijacked. Lebanese terrorists beat her, the pilot and the flight engineer. The terrorists didn't speak English, but Derickson realized she could talk with them in German -- and became their translator. She convinced them to let 17 elderly women and two children get off the plane during one of its many stops in the Middle East. When she realized the men intended to target Jewish passengers, she withheld certain passenger names from them. During a stop in Algiers, the ground crew wouldn't give them fuel without payment -- and the terrorists promised to kill a passenger every five minutes until they got some. "I asked for permission to go to my purse, and I got out my [credit] card and gave it to them. They put 6,000 gallons of jet fuel on my Shell credit card." After 36 grueling hours the hijackers let most passengers go, including Derickson; the rest weren't released for 17 days. But all but one of the 152 passengers and crew survived; the only death was a man beaten to death because he was in the U.S. Navy. Yet she never considered herself a hero: "They threw me a hot potato, and I had to handle it," she once said. Life was not easy after her deeds: she received threats from some thinking she hadn't done enough to shield Jews, and more threats from others who thought she did too much. She continued to fly, however, both with TWA and later Delta, until her 2003 retirement. Derickson died February 18 from cancer. She was 60.
From This is True for 20 February 2005
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