Today is the anniversary of the bombing of my hometown of #Solingen in 1944. On the same day, a young man from Winnipeg in Canada was killed there. Here's a story from World War II, one that makes me immensely sad but I feel needs to be told lest we forget. #thread

Jack Lupinsky was born in Winnipeg in 1919 to Meyer and Shayndel (née Koffman) Lupinsky who had immigrated here from Romania in 1910. He celebrated his Bar Mitzvah in 1932 and attended St.John's Technical School in the town, and enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942.

After his initial training he was sent to Europe, where he joined No. 428 Squadron RCAF, a night bomber squadron in the Royal Canadian Air Force based in Yorkshire.

He and his comrades flew Avro Lancaster bombers that were engaged in the strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany. Jack was one of the two pilots in a crew of seven.

On November 2nd, 1944, his plane was shot down during an attack on the city of Düsseldorf and crashed in Solingen. Three of his comrades died, Jack and three others, Matthew Dorrell, Allan Gilchrist Samuel and Ernest Crossley, were arrested and put into the city jail.

Solingen in 1944 was a small city of 140,000 inhabitants in the Bergisches Land, well-known worldwide for its cutlery products. The city centre mostly consisted of old timber frame houses from the 19th century.

There had been many smaller air raids on the city from 1940 on, the biggest so far had been an attack in June 1943 that had killed 21 citizens and injured 58.

As the Allied bombing campaign increased and the German position in the war became weaker and weaker, Solingen was marked for destruction by Bomber Command however. On November 4th, 1944, 170 Avro Lancasters arrived and began pounding the city.

In 18 minutes they dropped their complete bomb load and damaged the city immensely. The attack triggered 900 fires, the water supply collapsed, and at least 500 people died in the attack. It also knocked out most air raid sirens in the city center.

On November 5th, 1944, another group of 165 bombers arrived over the city. This time the damage was even worse, as the local firefighters could not fight the flames without water and soon the whole city was engulfed in a fire storm that almost completely destroyed the city.

I wonder what happened to Jack and his comrades. Had they been brought to an air raid shelter by their guards, sitting together with German citizens as the bombs exploded? Had they been left in their cells?

They did survive however, and later, as the city was still smouldering and burning around them, they were brought to a truck that was supposed to bring them to interrogation in Düsseldorf.

Were they shocked to see the destruction the bombs of their comrades had caused? Numb? Or grim in their determination to keep on fighting?

783 tons of high explosives and 150 tons of incendiary bombs had been dropped, 1,200 fires raged and the town was in ruins. Over a 1,000 people had perished, 1,600 homes were totally destroyed, and 20,000 citizens homeless. (Images Stadtarchiv Solingen)

Jack, his comrades & their two guards encountered a group of SA men, Wehrmacht soldiers and civilians. It is unclear what happened next, but the crowd surrounded them, a scuffle broke out & the POWs were killed by shots. Passers-by kicked and threw stones at the lifeless bodies.

Jack Lupinsky was 25 years old when he died.

In the evening of November 5 the BBC reports: "Solingen, the heart of the German steel industry, is a destroyed, dead city." (Image Stadtarchiv Solingen)

In 1947, a British military court sentenced SA leader Erich Wilinski and Wehrmacht soldier Hans Kühn. Wilinski was sentenced to death, Kühn to 20 years in prison. Wilinski was later pardoned to 20 years imprisonment and - like Hans Kühn - released early in 1957.

Today, Jack is buried at the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Kleve in Germany.

On November 5, 2019, on the 75th anniversary of the murders, the Solingen Appeal (Forum against War and Racism) organised a memorial service and wreath-laying ceremony together with the lord mayor and representatives of the British Veterans Association. (Image Christian Beier)

We must end all wars. /ends