Frankfurt convention centre harnessed during WW2 bomb defusal

Tens of thousands of people temporarily abandoned their homes yesterday in Frankfurt, and Jahrhunderthalle convention centre was used to house the displaced. Technicians worked for hours to defuse a 4,000-pound, World War II-era bomb, thought to have been dropped by the British Royal Air Force, after it was discovered on Tuesday at a construction site for faculty buildings on the edge of Goethe University. More than 60,000 people from the district, home to some of Frankfurt’s banking elite, cleared out early Sunday. Police combed the streets and used a helicopter with a heat-sensitive camera to ensure that the area was clear, but the presence of several holdouts meant that the process did not begin at noon, as officials had hoped. The number of people evacuated is believed to be the largest in postwar Germany. The city’s Jahrhunderthalle convention centre was opened, and, a local resident said, people arrived at a slow and steady pace. “There was no worry, no fright, no kind of rush,” he added. Dozens of bomb-disposal technicians and hundreds of civilians died from uncontrolled explosions in the decades following the war. The rate of fatalities has slowed since, with 11 technicians said to have been killed in Germany since 2000.