Family reunited with bracelet of airman killed in Nazi camp

A FAMILY have been reunited with an airman’s bracelet after it rose to the top of a concentration camp firepit.

Relatives of Sgt Frederic Habgood, who served in the Second World War, gathered in eastern France yesterday to commemorate victims of the Nazis and take possession of a piece of their family history, thought to have been lost or looted in 1944 but discovered in 2018.

Paul Habgood, his nephew, said it would be “good for the family” to be reunited with the bracelet. “At last we are bringing Freddie home,” he said.

Mr Habgood and his sister, Marilyn Corrigan, took possession of the silver bracelet at a “very moving” ceremony at the preserved Natzweiler-struthof concentration camp, where their uncle had been murdered by the Nazis.

Sgt Habgood, known as Freddie, was a crew member in a Lancaster bomber shot down during a raid on Stuttgart on July 29 1944. Betrayed by a local woman to the Gestapo, on July 31 he was taken to the nearby concentration camp and hanged. He was 21.

Sgt Habgood had trained in Canada in 1943. His uncle Harry and aunt Gladys lived in the country and had given him a bracelet engraved with his name, service number and RAF wings. His family assumed it had been stolen by the Nazis after his murder. In 2018, a local girl discovered the bracelet in the soil of the old ash pit as she was tidying up flowers.

Ms Corrigan said being presented with the bracelet was “the final conclusion of a journey that the family have taken over the last few years”.

The silver bracelet belonging to Sgt Frederic Habgood, right, was given to his niece and nephew, Marilyn Corrigan, far left, and Paul Habgood, centre, at the Natzweiler-struthof concentration camp in eastern France, above, where Sgt Habgood was murdered by the Nazis in 1944