Four families whose ancestors died in the Holocaust gathered last Sunday in the picturesque German village of Meudt for a small ceremony, as they have done often over the past 50 years.

The descendants — who now live in Britain, Brazil, Israel and the United States — stood surrounded by miniature cypress trees on the site where there was a synagogue in the days before Kristallnacht.

Alongside the Falkenstein, Heilberg, Lowenstein and Stern families were the children of survivors who had fled the Nazis and go on to settle in Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, as well as Brazil, Israel and Germany itself.

Today two memorial stones mark the location: a tall one on the synagogue’s original site; and an oblong monument in the Jewish cemetery engraved with the names and birth dates — but not death dates — of those who lost their lives in the camps.

Remarkably for such a small village, the ceremony has been held every three years for the past half century. It is distinctive for being organised by a non-Jewish German local, Stefan Aßmann, who traced the families’ descendants to ensure the memorial service does not lapse with time.

The commemoration was originally conceived by village resident Ludwig Falkenstein, who was a friend of Meudt’s mayor before the war. His nephew Stephen Falkenstein, whose grandparents and their youngest children were murdered in the Holocaust and who now lives in Bournemouth, has made the family pilgrimage regularly since 1987.

He said: “My late Uncle Ludwig Falkenstein, having survived numerous camps, settled in Brussels after the war.

“A very charismatic character, highly respected by all, he used to visit Meudt on a regular basis. I am not sure why Stefan Aßmann became involved, but can only assume he volunteered to keep the tradition going and was probably a friend of my late great uncle Ludwig.”

Last Sunday’s commemoration was the first time so many Falkensteins had been together with the other three families in the place they lived before the Second World War. “My grandparents did not believe that the Nazis would kill the Jews,” Mr Falkenstein said. “My grandfather Solomon Falkenstein was decorated with the Iron Cross for bravery in the First World War, hence he did not believe what was to come.

“They remained in Meudt with their children, who were too young to travel on their own.”