Outpouring of support follows release of Niedermayer murder film at QFT

Two days after Christmas Day in 1973, Mr Niedermayer was abducted in an effort to force the government to transfer the Price sisters and other republicans from GB to prisons in Northern Ireland.

He was pistol whipped to death after he attempted to escape his captors, with his body dumped face down and covered with rubbish at Colin Glen. The torment for the Niedermayer family continued as the IRA remained silent – refusing to admit involvement or reveal the whereabouts of Mr Niedermayer’s body.

Intelligence from a police informer led to covert police officers, posing as workers from an environmental improvement organisation, to his remains – seven years later – under tons of rubbish.

Never recovering from her ordeal, Mr Niedermayer’s widow Ingeborg took her own life in1990 – ten years after the body was recovered. The couple’s two daughters, Renate and Gabriele, would both also take their own lives within four years of their mother’s death. The ripple effect continued with Gabriele’s husband Robin Williams-Powell killing himself in 1999.

Mr Gregg said it is important that the story of the Niedermayer tragedy “wasn’t buried for another 50 years”.

‘Face Down’ has been described by the German Embassy in Dublin as “deeply moving” and “impressive”.

Mr Gregg said: “The reaction to the film has been overwhelmingly positive with audiences unfamiliar with events like the Niedermayer abduction and murder coming to terms with the full scale of the trauma visited on the family for 50 years and counting."

He added: “The film has struck a chord and its run has been extended for another week in Belfast. Dublin, and Galway.”

Tweeting his response to the film, former Irish justice minister Charlie Flanagan said: “New film on one of the most despicable acts of the Troubles has just opened & is truly a gripping, properly enraging account of the IRA’s murder of Thomas Niedermayer.”

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said the film is “well worth seeing”.

He said: “On 27 December 1973 Thomas Niedermayer, manager of the Grundig factory at Dunmurry in my constituency, was abducted by the IRA from his home, brutally beaten to death and his body abandoned in an illegal rubbish dump at Colin Glen. We need to learn from this and other atrocities perpetrated against innocent victims of the troubles on all sides so that the next generation will not repeat this madness”.

Former SDLP councillor Máiría Cahill tweeted: “It is a devastating and powerful watch that demonstrates the ripple effect of violence in such a way that it punches you in the gut. Cried through the second half”.

Produced and written by David Blake Knox, ‘Face Down’ is showing in the QFT in Belfast until August 24.