Cyril William Sibley

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Stumbling stone from March 27, 2009

Cyril William Sibley (born October 10, 1923 in Merthyr Tydfil , Wales, Great Britain, † February 21, 1945 in Dirmstein ) was a soldier in the Royal Air Force with the rank of sergeant . Shortly before the end of World War II , he survived as a crew member when his plane was shot down over the northern Front Palatinate (in what is now the state of Rhineland-Palatinate ), but was subsequently the victim of a so-called air murder by an NSDAP functionary .

During the Second World War there were hundreds of such air murders, some of which were encouraged by appropriate orders; more than 150 Germans were convicted and executed for this after the war.

Since 2009 there has been a stumbling block for Sibley in the center of Dirmstein next to the old town hall ( ⊙ ).

The Sibley case

Launch

"Halifax" bomber

On February 21, 1945, 349 four-engine British bombers of the types "Halifax" and "Lancaster" launched from the base in Lissett in Yorkshire on the north-east coast of England in a major attack on the Rhine-Hessian city ​​of Worms on the Upper Rhine . Shortly before the target, the unit was attacked by a German night fighter squadron at around 8:30 p.m. 21 British machines were shot down, the others were able to fly on and drop their bombs.

A hit "Halifax" with the number MZ 351 , whose crew consisted of seven men, came down ten kilometers from Worms south of the Rheinhessen district border in the Palatinate . The pilot Alan Charles Widdowson died in the crash on the district of Dirmstein - west of the residential development, today's vineyard Mandelpfad . The six remaining crew members were able to save themselves by parachute . Five of them, who landed in the open field, were captured and survived the last days of the war. There were navigator Terence Dillon , radio operator Michael Edward Jordan , bombardier John McFarlane Scott , also Frederick J. Fox and Francis Leslie Charles Mewis .

murder

The sixth survivor, the 21-year-old rear gunner Cyril William Sibley with service number 1898606, married to Florence S. J. Rogers since 1943, walked in the northern area of ​​the Dirmsteiner residential area not far from the cemetery - Friedhofstr. 18 ( ⊙ ) - where he got caught with his parachute in a treetop in Maria Gassner's garden . After this woman had taken care of Sibley's injured hand, the local group leader Adolf Wolfert appeared a little later , accompanied by a member of the Volkssturm , the battalion commander Georg Hartleb (born May 12, 1893 in Dirmstein; † October 11, 1946 in Hameln ). Sibley was fetched from the Gassner house under threats and at gunpoint and taken to the local gendarmerie post next door. Another member of the Volkssturm, Adjutant Heinrich Kress , a teacher from Grünstadt, joined the group there.

Dirmstein train station

A contemporary witness, Arthur Maurer, then 15 years old, who was the initiator of the St. Michael Dirmstein Cultural Association in 1996 and has been its honorary chairman since 2004, described the incident as follows:

“Together with my friend Hans Landin, I was the first to see the English plane that crashed just outside Dirmstein in the Am Mandelpfad vineyard. We found the dead pilot lying on his back next to the wreckage, bleeding from his mouth, nose and ears. His parachute was tangled in one of the engines. After we had inspected everything, we went to the local gendarmerie post to report that the body was found. Another member of the aircraft crew was just being demonstrated there. We heard that it was decided to take the prisoner to Grünstadt, an hour's walk away. The prisoner and his three guards, who tried to scare us away, made their way through Friedhofstrasse and Obersülzer Strasse. I followed with other youngsters at a distance. Suddenly the three armed men and their prisoners diverged to the right from Obersülzer Strasse and disappeared in the direction of Offstein behind an operating building ( ⊙ ) of the local railway, which was closed in 1939, where Offsteiner Strasse now ends. After a few moments we heard several shots ... "

- Arthur Maurer (* 1929) on May 5, 2006

As was established in the Allied investigations after the end of the war, Adolf Wolfert shot the prisoner in the head and chest, Georg Hartleb put a pistol in the head of the man who was lying on the ground and probably already dead; Heinrich Kress did not take part in the murder. That same night the Dirmsteiner testified that a total of three shots could be heardOtto Hanewald towards his family.

The man who had been shot was buried on the edge of the Dirmstein cemetery on the afternoon of February 22, 1945 in a mass grave that had been dug for the six dead inmates of a second bomber that crashed near Dirmstein and the pilots of the first plane. A wooden cross bore the inscription: “Eight shot down English pilots are resting in this grave.” However, this formulation did not apply to Sibley, who had survived the downing of his plane.

Exhumation and reburial

Rheinberg military cemetery

During the exhumation of the corpses on August 6, 1945, an American investigative commission found that Sibley had been placed on top of the grave without a coffin, and recorded the still visible injuries that were shown by the gunshots in the head and chest. Among the men who had to dig up the bodies was the then 18-year-old Erwin Folz, who confirmed the findings in 2014, 69 years later. In April 1948, the eight killed were reburied in the British military cemetery in Rheinberg on the Lower Rhine; Sibley's grave bears the number 20.B.20.

Trial and Execution

Hamelin prison , place of execution for the two murderers

From May 13 to 17, 1946, those involved in Sibley's killing stood before a British military tribunal in Bad Lippspringe . Adolf Wolfert defended himself with a lack of orders ; his superior, the Frankenthaler NSDAP district leader Hieronymus Merkle (1887–1970), had already issued instructions earlier not to make enemy aircraft crews shot down in his area of ​​responsibility into prisoners of war. Georg Hartleb denied the existence of such an instruction; at the same time he admitted that he had been privy to Wolfert's killing plan. Heinrich Kreß referred to the fact that he was completely ignorant because of his hearing loss.

Wolfert's statement in court was recorded in English:

“We took the airman behind the railway station. He did not say anything and we did not speak to him. Hartleb took him with his left hand, turned him around and held his revolver close to his face. I then took my revolver and shot the airman from a distance of about two meters, once in the head and once in the chest. The airman fell down, and Hartleb fired one more shot after he had fallen down. "

“We led the plane behind the station building. He said nothing, and we didn't talk to him either. Hartleb grabbed him in his left hand, turned him around and held the revolver close to his face. So I took my revolver and shot the plane from about six feet, once in the head and once in the chest. The plane fell to the ground and Hartleb fired another shot when he had already fallen. "

The verdict for Wolfert and Hartleb was " murder ", the punishment was death by hanging . The convicts appealed, but the Supreme Army Court in London upheld the decision of the lower court on July 22, 1946. On 11 October 1946, the two murderers were in prison of Hameln executed and then buried anonymously. Kreß was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in the first instance, but was acquitted on appeal and released in September 1946.

In a second court case, the former district leader Merkle was acquitted on June 1, 1948 by a British military court in Hamburg .

Work-up

The literary representation of this bloody act was processed by two native Dirmsteiners: in 1985 and 2008 by the writer Walter Landin and in 2004 by Isolde Stauder, the daughter of the ear witness Otto Hanewald mentioned in the murder section. In the village chronicle, published in 2005, the names of the perpetrators were only given with initials . There is a typescript about a radio broadcast in 2001, a broadcast from 2014 is available in the SWR2 media library as a file in PDF and MP3 format (→  web links ).

During the “Dirmstein remembers” campaign, the Cologne artist Gunter Demnig laid a stumbling block for Sibley next to the old town hall on March 27, 2009 . The documentation published at the same time lists the names of the Dirmstein victims of National Socialism and - as far as is known - the names of the perpetrators.

literature

  • Ludwig Faust: When the extermination machine was running. Bad Dürkheim and the Vorderpfalz in the air war 1939–1945 . 2nd Edition. Self-published, Bad Dürkheim 2005, ISBN 3-00-015756-5 , p. 77 f., 126 f .
  • Walter Göbel: The British military trial in Bad Lippspringe . In: Schlänger Bote . Schlangen 1998 (1998: No. 211, p. 18 f .; No. 212, p. 17 f., 1999: No. 213, pp. 3-5).
  • Albert H. Keil (Red.): "Dirmstein remembers". Days of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism . Ed .: Dirmstein municipality. Dirmstein 2009 ( verlag-pfalzmundart.de [PDF; 333 kB ]).
  • Peter Krone: Historical documentation "Executed graves" at the Wehl cemetery in Hameln . Hameln 1987, p. 69 .
  • Walter Landin : When grass grows first. Stories (=  author forum ). Palatinate Publishing House, Landau 1985, ISBN 3-87629-088-0 .
  • Walter Landin: Anton Kocher and the English aviator . In: Lilo Beil, Walter Landin, Wolfgang Ohler (eds.): Murderous Palatinate (=  Kurpfalz-Krimis . Volume 4 ). Wellhöfer Verlag, Mannheim 2008, ISBN 978-3-939540-21-2 .
  • Isolde Stauder: Where the village comes to an end. An authentic story . Sommer Druck und Verlag, Grünstadt 2004 (author Stauder is the daughter of Otto Hanewald ( see above ), the ear witness for the murder ).
  • Marie-Christine Werner: The English aviator. The murder of Cyril William Sibley . Mainz 2001 (typescript of the broadcast of the Südwestrundfunk from February 10, 2001, 9 to 10 p.m.).
  • Marie-Christine Werner, Johannes Weiß (Red.): Stumbling blocks: Cyril William Sibley, Dirmstein (=  SWR2 manuscript service ). Mainz March 24, 2014 ( swr.de [PDF; 142 kB ]).
  • Hannes Ziegler: Dirmstein in National Socialism . In: Michael Martin (ed.): Dirmstein - nobility, farmers and citizens. Chronicle of the Dirmstein community . Foundation for the Promotion of Palatine Historical Research , Neustadt an der Weinstrasse 2005, ISBN 3-9808304-6-2 , p. 197 ff .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Archive Report: Allied Forces. aircrewremembered.com, accessed June 12, 2017 .
  2. ^ A b c Marie-Christine Werner: The English aviator . 2001.
  3. ↑ Address book for Grünstadt, Eisenberg, Hettenleidelheim and 34 places in the area . Grünstadt 1960, p.  34 .
  4. ↑ Arthur Maurer: Description of the incident . May 5, 2006 (minutes during the general meeting of the St. Michael Dirmstein cultural association ).
  5. ^ Isolde Stauder: Where the village comes to an end . 2004, p. 134 f .
  6. ↑ a b Marie-Christine Werner, Johannes Weiß (Red.): Stolpersteine: Cyril William Sibley, Dirmstein . 2014 ( swr.de [PDF; 142 kB ]).
  7. ^ Cyril William Sibley in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved June 12, 2017 (English). .
  8. ↑ a b c d Hannes Ziegler: Dirmstein in National Socialism . Chapter Dirmstein in World War II , 2005, p. 206 f .
  9. ↑ Oliver Clutton-Brock: Footprints on the Sands of Time: RAF Bomber Command Prisoners-of-War in Germany 1939-1945 . Grub Street Publishing, Havertown 2003, ISBN 1-909166-30-8 , pp. 213 ( books.google.de ).
  10. ↑ Peter Krone: Historical documentation "Executed Graves" at the Wehl cemetery in Hameln . Hameln 1987, p. 69 .
  11. ^ Franz Maier: Biographical Organization Handbook of the NSDAP and its divisions in the area of ​​today's state of Rhineland-Palatinate (=  publications of the commission of the state parliament for the history of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate . Volume 28 ). Hase & Koehler, Mainz 2007, ISBN 3-7758-1407-8 , pp. 350 .
  12. ^ Municipality of Dirmstein (ed.), Albert H. Keil (red.): "Dirmstein remembers". 2009, p. 3 f., 13 f. , accessed October 8, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Sibley, Cyril William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British military, sergeant in the Royal Air Force
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Merthyr Tydfil , Wales, UK
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 1945
Place of death Dirmstein , Germany