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Rupert Neudeck dies

The journalist, who saved thousands of refugees with his humanitarian aid group, has died.

01.06.2016
© dpa/Britta Pedersen - Rupert Neudeck

Cologne (dpa) – Rupert Neudeck, the founder of the humanitarian aid group Cap Anamur, is dead. A spokesman for the group said that he died on Tuesday, aged 77. Neudeck had founded Cap Anamur in 1979 and the Green Helmets Peace Corps in 2003. In the 1980s the Cap Anamur activists saved more than 11,000 Vietnamese boat people from the South China Sea. For decades the journalist helped people in need and refugees. In 2015 in the current debate about refugees he called for the German navy to be deployed and for long-term sea rescue operations in the Mediterranean. Federal Minister of Justice Heiko Maas (SPD) twittered on Tuesday: “Rupert Neudeck did perhaps the greatest thing a human being can possibly do: save human lives.”

Günter Wallraff, his friend and companion, told the German Press Agency (dpa): “He was a modern-day saint. With Rupert Neudeck words and deeds were one thing. He cannot be replaced.” Neudeck founded the Green Helmets in response to 9/11 – “so that we don’t set up a front against Muslims”. Christians and Muslims work together in the organisation, build schools together, including in Muslim countries such as Afghanistan. “All our life we will never be relieved of the rather nice burden of being the parents of Cap Anamur and the Green Helmets,” he had told dpa in 2014 on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Neudeck lived humbly with his wife Christel in Troisdorf near Bonn.

Neudeck had been active until recently, promoting his initiative and raising donations. His commitment was rooted in his Christian faith - and in his own past: Towards the end of the War he and his family fled from Danzig to the Westphalia region, so he himself had been a refugee in need. Neudeck, who had three children and several grandchildren, received many awards for his courageous efforts, among them the European Social Prize (2006) and the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (2007).

Source: dpa; translation: FSM

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