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Paralympic flame returns to Stoke Mandeville

August 29, 2012 08:32
Sir Ludwig Guttmann

ByJennifer Lipman, Jennifer Lipman

1 min read

Tributes were paid to the Jewish doctor who founded the Paralympics as the flame was brought to the hospital where it all began.

Sixty four years after Sir Ludwig Guttmann organised the first games for disabled patients at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, the Paralympic Games have returned to London.

Sir Ludwig was a pioneering neurosurgeon who was forced to flee Nazi Germany before the Holocaust. Appointed to Stoke Mandeville during the war, the doctor known affectionately as "Poppa" was an eccentric and charismatic figure who argued that paralysed patients required physical stimulation in order to rehabilitate.

He died in 1980 but his daughter, Eva Loeffler – who has the honorary title of mayoress of the Paralympic Village – was at Stoke Mandeville last night as 3,000 onlookers greeted the torch. Among them were London mayor Boris Johnson and Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.