there were three Jewish families, two of whom fled, and the other of whom was deported. Today, there are no Jews living in Schüttorf. During the Allied air war on Germany, Schüttorf was repeatedly bombed, not as a primary target, however. When Allied fliers had not used all their bombs on their mission, it was common practice simply to dump the unused ones anywhere before leaving Germany. Schüttorf was unlucky enough to be chosen as the dumping ground several times. On 3 April 1945, after the Allies had taken Bad Bentheim (then still Bentheim), they supposed that strong German forces were lying in wait in Schüttorf, and so they shelled the town heavily, with bomber squadrons also dropping phosphorus incendiary bombs. This brought about the utter destruction of 15 houses. A further 25 were heavily damaged, and roughly 600 lightly damaged. The German paratroopers who had been stationed in Schüttorf had withdrawn already anyway, to Lingen, blowing up all bridges on the Vechte and wrecking the electrical and telephone systems as they went. On 4 April 1945, the town hall was struck by an aerial bomb and burnt, along with the town's archive. The next day, Schüttorf was liberated by British troops. All together, Schüttorf counted 222 dead, eight civilians had been killed in bombings and shellings, and 114 inhabitants were said to be missing. The British military government installed Bernhard Verwold as honorary mayor in April 1945 until the townsfolk could once again elect a mayor themselves. This they eventually did, and on 25 January 1946 they returned the later honorary citizen Dr. Franz Scheurmann to the mayor's office. In 1960, he was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz. (see 4) One Nazi opponent was Friedrich Middendorff, who was made pastor of the Evangelical-Reformed parish in Schüttorf in 1926. Even before the Machtergreifung, he had been openly disagreeing with National Socialist Ideology in the Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt, and he was also known through his work in the Christlich-Sozialer Volksdienst, and he quickly became a target for the Nazis. What followed was surveillance by the Gestapo and state reprisals. The disagreement reached its apex on 18 April 1937 when several hundred Schüttorfers gathered before the town hall after Middendorff had been arrested and “sang him free”, standing there for hours singing chorales until he was released. His article Ein Weniges zur Judenfrage (“A Little About the Jewish Question”), which was seized and banned,