KINDNESS DURING WARTIME

Letters from German POWs say Shillington man treated them with respect

Growing up in Shillington, Roger Rank was aware that his father, Roy Rank, had befriended German prisoners of war held in captivity at Reading Army Air Field during World War II.

The elder Rank, a painter and paperhanger, supervised prisoners at a paint shop in the POW camp at the airport.

Contrary to what might have been expected as American soldiers were fighting and dying in Europe, Roy Rank treated the POWs with respect and earned theirs in return.

It wasn’t until more than 60 years later, however, that Roger Rank realized the extent of his father’s relationship with POWs Walter Gotz and Otto Wilke, which continued in letters exchanged

after they were repatriated to Germany.

A cache of letters written from Gotz and Wilke to Roy Rank, copies of which surfaced in Berks County in 2018, launched Rank on a journey of discovery cataloged in a recently published book.

“Never I

Shall

Forget

These Human People,” a line in a letter written by former Reading POW Karl Ritzenbaum, is the story of a tiny seed of humanity flourishing amid the inhumanity of a world at war.

“It is about how people, even on opposite sides of a war, can look past national politics to show kindness

and a willingness to help each other simply because they are human and in need,” Rank writes in the preface to his book.

Rediscovering the past

The German POWs held at the Reading airport had

returned to a bombed-out homeland by the time Roger G. Rank was born in 1949.

He recalls his father, a stamp collector, poring over stamps on letters from Germany

in the 1950s. He was aware they were from former POWs. Indeed, as a teen, Rank was briefly a pen pal with Wolfram Gotz, son of POW Walter Gotz.

The saga of the POWs faded when, after graduating from Gov. Mifflin High School and Albright College, Rank embarked on an academic career as a microbiologist. Now 72, he’s professor emeritus of the University of Arkansas College of Medicine in Little Rock, where he lives.

Unbeknownst to Rank, his father had kept 84 letters written to him from Germany by former POWs he’d supervised.

His interest was piqued after Marjorie Hassler, his aunt in Wyomissing, told him of a story about the letters that appeared in the Reading Eagle on Nov. 18, 2018.

READING EAGLE Roger G. Rank displays a decorative plate sent to his father, Roy Rank, by former POW Otto Wilke as a wedding present in 1948. Rank’’s new book, “Never I Shall Forget These Human People,” explores friendships formed between his father and German POWs at Reading Army Air Field during WWII.

Walter Gotz wrote letters of friendship to Roy Rank, his supervisor at a POW camp on Reading Army Air Field in WWII. Gotz’s letters are reprinted in a new book “Never I Shall Forget These Human People” by Roger G. Rank, Roy’s son.

Otto Wilke, a former POW at Reading Army Air Field during WWII, wrote letters of friendship to Roy Rank, a supervisor at the camp, after the war. An artist, he sent a decorative plate to Rank when he was married in 1948.