Confronting the bitter legacy of war

Huchenfeld priest Jorg Geissler (left) and ex-POW Tom Tate

In the last weeks of World War II five British POWs were murdered by a German mob after a devastating air raid on their town. Now a former German soldier is helping both sides to confront the past.

Dr Curt-Jurgen Heinemann-Gruder, a former soldier who fought for Hitler during the war, moved to Huchenfeld, near Pforzheim, in the 1980s.

He soon discovered that a mob had murdered five British RAF prisoners of war (POWs) in the village churchyard shortly before the end of the war.

The RAF men had been forced to bale out of their badly-damaged plane near Pforzheim just weeks after an British bombing raid on the town.

Bitterness

They were murdered in retaliation for the air raid in which 17,000 people - more than a quarter of the town's population - perished.

I had to honour the Allied soldiers as liberators of Germany

Dr Heinemann-Gruder

Yet, Dr Heinemann-Gruder was determined that the village should overcome its bitterness towards the British and publicly atone for the murders.

He told Radio 4's A Rocking Horse called Hope: "It was an act of decency for me as a former German officer. These British officers and their sergeant were killed as prisoners against the law of war.

"I had to honour the Allied soldiers as the liberators of Germany from our own tyranny. We did not have the strength to get rid of Hitler ourselves.

But not everyone in Huchenfeld agreed with Dr Heinemann-Gruder then, and some still do not.

Resistance

Elfriede Czap, a teenager at the time of the attack and subsequent revenge killings, is saddened by some people's reluctance to face up to the past.

It hurts me that people don't want to own up or even talk about it

Bombing raid survivor Elfriede Czap

"It hurts me that people don't want to own up or at least talk about it but just say that we suffered too," she said.

Dr Heinemann-Gruder asked that the village put up a commemorative plaque for the RAF victims.

Resistance was so strong that his request prompted demonstrations and was refused by the local authorities.

More than a quarter of the town's population perished

After continued lobbying, the plaque was eventually placed on the wall of Huchenfeld church.

A special church service was held to mark the unveiling of the plaque in 1992.

Paul Oesteicher of Coventry Cathedral led the service and remembers it as an extraordinary and emotional day.

"When we came to distribute communion, we got to one man who had tears rolling down his cheeks," he told the programme.

"I said 'this is a very moving occasion I can understand why you're crying', and through his tears he said, 'No, you can't understand - I was one of the boys who killed them and I've come to be forgiven'."

Friendship from ruin

Not only did the ceremony openly acknowledge the RAF men were murdered, it led to an extraordinary reconciliation between the relatives of both British and German victims.

The pilot of the damaged plane, who survived by flying the burning plane back to England, was traced by the villagers.

The rocking horse sent by John Wynne

Initially angry at the fate of his crew, John Wynne later established a school exchange between his Welsh village and Huchenfeld and gave a rocking horse, called Hope, to the local kindergarten.

The inscription on John Wynne's rocking horse reads: "To the children of Huchenfeld from the mothers of 214 Royal Air Force Squadron".

And this act of friendship led to another reconciliation.

It was just chance that Tom Tate, a member of the RAF crew who escaped death by fleeing the Huchenfeld church barefoot just before the shootings, read about Mr Wynne's gift in a magazine.

He too decided to return to Huchenfeld in the hope he could overcome his own hatred of the Germans.

There he met the local woman, Emilie Bohnenberger, who had risked imprisonment by giving Tom her dead husband's boots to wear.

Tom, Emilie and many others meet every year to remember the victims and strengthen friendships and ties, as well as forge new ones.

They are determined that today's children do not suffer the horrific events they have had to live with.

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A Rocking Horse Called Hope will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 19 December at 2000 GMT.

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