Facedown

On 27th December 1973, a nightmare began for an entire family. On that night, Thomas Niedermayer, Germany’s Honorary Consul to Northern Ireland and the Manager of the Grundig Factory in West Belfast, was kidnapped from his home in Belfast by the IRA. He was never seen alive again by his friends or family. He became one of the ‘disappeared’, and it seemed that no-one knew what had happened to him. His wife, Ingeborg, and his daughters Renate and Gabriele, spent the next seven years not knowing if Thomas were alive or dead. Then, in 1980, an IRA defector provided the police with information that led to the recovery of Thomas’s body. But the trauma for the Niedermayer’s did not end there. In the years that followed the emotional toll would decimate the family. Thomas and Ingeborg’s only granddaughters, Tanya and Rachel, were told nothing of this history when they were growing up. Now, 50 years after their grandfather was kidnapped, they have embarked on a painful journey of discovery.