A "WHERE are they now" plea with a difference is presented to Memory Lane readers.

I am searching for surviving members or descendants of a Worcester family, who showed true Christian kindness to three German PoWs based near the city during and after the Second World War.

The Rudge family of Severn Street invited the three "enemies" into their home to share every Christmas and festive occasion with them, despite having 13 children of their own to feed and entertain.

At least, these are the basic facts as remembered by one of those PoWs, Josef Knopp, now in his 80s and living back in his native Germany.

The bid to trace surviving members of the Rudge family after more than half-a-century is prompted by Karl-Heinz Koster, chairman of the Twinning Association in Worcester's German twin town of Kleve.

In a letter to John Cave, a vice-president of the Faithful City's Twinning Association, he explains that at the recent funeral of Johann Muller, who was a PoW in Worcester, he found himself sitting opposite two elderly men who told him they too had been P-o-Ws in Worcester.

One of them, Josef Knopp subsequently wrote to Herr Koster stressing that he had only good memories of his time in the city and especially of a family who had 13 children but still invited him and two other German soldiers to share Christmas celebrations with them.

Josef remembered that the head of the family was Mr B. Rudge of 40 Severn Street and that one of his daughters was named Winnie.

Josef explained that he and some other PoWs had been based near Perdiswell and had been drafted in on occasions by the city council to work on street maintenance and other manual tasks. One of his memories was of cleaning the roads near the Severn Bridge following floods.

Herr Koster writes: "I thought that you might be interested in this story and perhaps could try to find out if members of the family are still alive and have some memories of Josef Knopp. Sometimes, we live in just a small world which offers big surprises."

* Readers who can point us to surviving members or descendants of the Rudge family are asked to contact me at the Evening News. It would also be of great interest if any readers can recall precisely where German PoWs were based in the Perdiswell area.