'I want to meet the family of the German pilot who shot down Dad'

Bob Maddams would like to meet the family of Hans Autenreith, pictured in World War Two

A filmmaker who made an emotional visit to a prison where his father was held during World War Two is now trying to find the family of the German fighter pilot who shot him down.

Aged 20, Sgt Geoff Maddams was a radio operator in a Wellington bomber shot down over the Netherlands in 1942. It had taken off from RAF Pershore in Worcestershire on 31 July for a raid on Dusseldorf.

The crew bailed out, and Geoff was captured by the Germans. After being interrogated by the Gestapo in Amsterdam, he was eventually sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Lamsdorf, in Nazi-occupied Poland.

The prisoners were kept in grim conditions, but a bright spot of their time in captivity was the occasional Red Cross parcel they received. One of them contained a letter Geoff's mother sent him from her home in Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

Earlier this year, Geoff's son, Bob Maddams, from Louth, Lincolnshire, retraced his father's footsteps in Poland after his interest was piqued by the note.

The letter that started Bob Maddams's remarkable journey

In it, Geoff's mother wrote: "Everybody has been most kind and helpful… All your friends are eager to send you things. They have collected 25 shillings at the Horse & Groom to send cigarettes to you."

She added: "We thought of you on your 21st birthday and kept looking at your photo… We all send our best love to you and hope it won't be long before you will all be with us again.

"May God bless you and keep you safe. Your loving mother."

Sgt Geoff Maddams is in the middle on the back row

Geoff kept the letter throughout his time in captivity, and it also survived the so-called "death march" he was sent on towards the end of the war. The retreating Germans forced PoWs to head west and thousands of prisoners died on the marches, but Geoff was one of the lucky ones, and he was eventually liberated by US army.

Bob, 68, still has the letter, and it inspired him to make the visit to Poland earlier this year.

"To hold the actual letter my grandmother sent to her son 80-plus years ago feels amazing. You can't get that with an email," he said.

Of the hundreds of PoW camps in Poland, Lamsdorf is the only one still there, and it has been turned into a museum.

The camp at Lamsdorf today

Eight decades after the war ended, Bob made a visit to Lamsdorf, and documented the trip in a film.

"How many people get the chance to walk in their dad's PoW footsteps? It was something I felt I just had to do," he said.

"Very little of the original camp remains but there are watch towers and barbed wire fences, which really fire up your imagination. It was haunting and ghostly to walk round.

"I wanted to tell a story that was both personal and universal. Sadly, the message of the film is just as important in today's troubling times."

Remarkably, Bob credits the German pilot – Hans Autenreith, who was also aged 20 – as having saved his father's life.

Bob's reasoning is that had Geoff returned home safely that night, he would have been sent out on sortie after sortie until he was killed.

Bob Maddams retraced his father's footsteps, 80 years on

Bob said he would love to make contact with the German's family.

"Shooting Dad down so that he saw out the rest of the war as a PoW saved his life that night and I wouldn't be here without him," he said.

Hans was also shot down during the war, and himself became a PoW.

After returning to Soviet-occupied Berlin after the conflict ended, he married Annaliesse. He died in 1996, aged 75 – nine years before Geoff.

In his film, Bob also visits International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln, which has "a message that couldn't be more simple – recognition, remembrance and reconciliation", he said.

"I'd like to think that if Dad and Hans had met in their old age, they'd have agreed with that. Who knows? They may even have shared a pint or two.

"I don't know if Hans and Annaliesse had children, but I'd like to think they raised a family after the war. If so, perhaps there's someone out there, possibly in Germany, who's about my age and is also part of this story. If there is, I'd really like to meet them.

"And who knows? It could perhaps start with a letter."

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