Extract from South Bank Dornier
..At the graveside, seventy-eight year-old Heinz Möllenbrok voiced similar sentiments when he appealed for the spirit of reconciliation to continue through future generations.
For this writer, at least, that spirit was amply demonstrated by an elderly lady who came forward to place her own small bouquet of flowers after the official wreaths had been laid.
It transpired that she had been a member of the Belgian Resistance when her country had been under German occupation during the last war. Her husband of two weeks had been shot by the Gestapo. In those dangerous days, she had not been able to place flowers on her husband's grave but, she said, she hoped that someone had done so on her behalf.
 Local legend has it that some time after the cessation of hostilities in 1945, a German lady visited South Bank and sought the location of the crash site. It is said that she told people that her son had been one of the crew of the Dornier but that he had never been found. If the story is true, the lady must have been the mother of Hans Maneke, for by then the radio-operator's three colleagues had been given headstones in Thornaby cemetery. Sadly, she could not have known that an error had been made; and if she visited Thornaby and stood by the graves of her son's friends, she would not have known that she was standing within six feet of her child.
There were no members of Heinrich Richter's family present when he was buried on 14 October 1998, and it seems that any trace of Frau Maneke was lost long ago. However, they were represented on the day by a grey-haired old lady who had refuted justifiable reasons to feel bitter and whose spontaneous floral tribute made a far deeper impression on many of those present than did the impressive, and faultless, official arrangements. It was moving moment...
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