Uwe Benkel

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Uwe Benkel (2012)

Uwe Benkel (born December 23, 1960 in Kaiserslautern ) is a German researcher for missing persons .

Private

Uwe Benkel lives in Heltersberg and works for a health insurance company . He is married and has two children. Two of his father's brothers are missing from World War II .

Missing person research

Under the impression of the Ramstein disaster , Uwe Benkel founded the research group for missing persons in 1989 . The interest of the group is not the air war - archeology , but you want missing airmen of the warring nations to return its name and provide a decent burial. The focus of the work is in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland , where the group has located over 450 crash sites; They were also active in all federal states and in the neighboring European area. In 26 years, the group dug for more than 140 missing aircraft, recovering the remains of 50 crew members.

Uwe Ochsenknecht is one of Benkel's supporters , whose father was able to parachute himself out of a Stuka Ju 87 on July 18, 1944 . The pilot was killed at the time. Benkel recovered the wreckage of the plane that crashed near Rheindürkheim .

The expert knowledge of the working group is repeatedly asked for , among other things, in the exhumation and identification of unknown soldiers. As an author , Benkel wrote two works on local history on the fallen and civilian victims of both world wars . The group's greatest success in 2012 was the recovery of a missing British bomber crew near Laumersheim. So far, the following documentaries have been shown on SWR television: The Grave of Mysteries - The Fateful Investigator - Shot down and missing and Benkel's Mission (2016).

Honors

His work was awarded the State of Rhineland-Palatinate's Medal of Merit in 1998. Benkel received further honors from the city of Kaiserslautern, the district association of the VdK and the Central Identification Laboratory (CIL) in Hawaii . The working group received letters of appreciation from Prime Ministers Kurt Beck , Bernhard Vogel and the American President Bill Clinton . In 2015 the working group received an award from No. 49 Squadron ( RAF ) for outstanding service in researching the unit's plane crashes. At the beginning of 2016, Benkel received the General George S. Patton Medal for special services in the field of missing person research.

Fonts

  • Fallen - missing, the Heltersberg fallen, missing and civilian victims of both world wars. "So that they are not forgotten ...". Heltersberg, 2008. 362 pages.
  • Schauerberg war fates . Fallen and missing on Europe's battlefields. 1915-18 & 1942-45. Schauerberg 2013. 138 pages.
  • "Shot down and fallen ... in the Homburg / Saar area", documentation about plane crashes in the Homburg / Saar area. August 2015. 52 pages.
  • "What was left of the war ..." - Military finds along the retreat routes of the Second World War - Verbandsgemeinde Waldfischbach-Burgalben . March 2016. 72 pages
  • "Shot down and crashed ... in the area of ​​Homburg / Saar" - The search for WW II aircraft and crews . May 2016. 64 pages,

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Working group for missing persons research
  2. ↑ Rheindürkheim - Find of an airplane wreck , accessed on March 22, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Benkel, Uwe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German missing person researcher
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Kaiserslautern