15 Facts About Charles Coward

Charles Coward smuggled at least several hundred Jewish prisoners out of concentration camps.

Charles Coward managed to make two escape attempts before even reaching a prisoner of war camp, then made seven further escapes; on one memorable occasion managing to be awarded the Iron Cross while posing as a wounded soldier in a German Army field hospital.

Charles Coward witnessed the arrival of trainloads of Jews to the extermination camp.

Charles Coward exchanged coded messages with the British authorities via letters to a fictitious Mr William Orange, giving military information, notes on the conditions of POWs and the other prisoners in the camps, as well as dates and numbers of the arrival of trainloads of Jews.

Charles Coward determined to contact him direct, managed to swap clothes with an inmate on a work detail and spent the night in the Jewish camp, seeing at first hand the horrific conditions in which these Jewish people were held.

Charles Coward failed to find the individual, later found to be Karel Sperber - see below.

Charles Coward then gave the documents and clothes taken from the non-Jewish corpses to the Jewish escapees, who adopted these new identities and were then smuggled out of the camp altogether.

Charles Coward carried out this scheme on numerous occasions and is estimated to have saved at least 400 Jewish slave labourers.

In December 1944 Charles Coward was sent back to the main camp of Stalag VIII-B at Lamsdorf and in January 1945 the POWs were marched under guard to Bavaria, where they were eventually liberated.

In 1953, Charles Coward appeared as a witness in the "Wollheim Suit", when former slave labourer Norbert Wollheim sued IG Farben for his salary and compensation for damages.

In January 1955, Charles Coward joined the Old Comrades Lodge No 4077 of UGLE.

Charles Coward was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1960 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre.

In 1963, Charles Coward was named one of the Righteous Among the Nations and had a tree planted in his honour in the Avenue of Righteous Gentiles in Yad Vashem.

In 2003, Charles Coward was further commemorated with the mounting of a blue plaque at his home at 133, Chichester Road, Edmonton, London, where he lived from 1945 until his death.

In 2010, Charles Coward was posthumously named a British Hero of the Holocaust by the British Government.