From Buchenwald to Bicknor

We regret to report the death of Mr Hugh Charles Newton (78) of Millway, English Bicknor. Mr Newton who had been ill for nine weeks, died peaceful at Lydbrook Hospital early on Tuesday morning.

One who had faced death on many occasions, he was known as a quiet, unassuming man who was happy to involve himself in his family and village activities, such as the football club, village hall committee and church.
Few people knew of his life before he came to English Bicknor after the war, having married a local girl, Miss Ethel Jones. Few people knew that he was once a wealthy Vienna businessman, whose activities in combating Nazism in his country led to his imprisonment in Dachau and Buchenwald, and the shooting by the Gestapo of his wife, mother and daughter in a labour camp.

After months of torment in Buchenwald, during which time he was flogged many times and suffered a wrist smashed by a rifle butt, bayonet wounds in each arm and a guard’s revolver bullet in his back, he escaped by stealing an S.S uniform and marching through the gates. For months he travelled through Prague, Budapest, Istanbul, Haifa, Cairo and Tripoli, France and Belgium, arriving in England after the declaration of war in 1939.
Among the first aliens to join the Pioneers, a detachment of whom were stationed at English Bicknor, he was soon in France, being evacuated more than a month after the main evacuation at Dunkirk. Transferred to the K.O.Y Light Infantry, he fought with the 8th Army through the African campaign, then later with the Duke of Wellington’s at Mesina and Anzio.

Several years previously, as a director of a large chain-store company, he had travelled widely and was fluent in eight languages, including Russian. The allied intelligence services were soon putting his talents to good use, and during the war years he carried out nine parachute missions into Germany, where he obtained vital pieces of information.

His work as a secret agent ended after D-Day when he was attached to the Allied Control Commission. His work was to arrest and interrogate high ranking Nazi officials, among them the Minster of Agricultural, Dr Backer and Koch, the former Commandant of Buchenwald, whose wife made lampshades from the skin of tattooed prisoners.

During the war he had changed his name from Newbauer to Newton, for security reasons, and at the end of the war he became a natural British subject, joined the civil service and worked at the Admiralty at Bath.
Later Mr Newton returned to the store life he had known so well and the former Austrian university divinity student, wealthy businessman and football player who won caps for his country on three occasions in the 1920s, passed his time happily at Blinkhorn’s in Gloucester, then as an assistant sales manager at Bon Marche (now Debenhams) until he retired in 1970. Mr Newton is survived by his wife, Ethel, son, Richard – a credit controller at Reeds - - and grandsons Jason and David.
The funeral was arranged to take place at English Bicknor church at 11am on Saturday.