As with Neave, Fowler successfully escaped from his first camp, Stalag Luft 1, near Barth, a German coastal town off the Baltic Sea. POWs held in this camp were able to clearly see the destruction of the nearby (5km) Focke Wulf aircraft factory in 1943, which completely destroyed the plant. An alphabetical list of British and Dominion Air Force PoWs in German hands in 1944-1945 is in AIR 20/2336. The escape and evasion reports in AIR 40/1545-1552 include internal indexes, although these documents appear to be duplicates of the reports found in some of the WO 208 files described at the start of this section. 101 min The International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva keeps incomplete lists of all known POWs and internees of all nationalities for the Second World War. Published and available only at Auschwitz/Birkenau itself this book is a definitive work on the various camps including all the work details. Allied prisoners of war plan for several hundred of their number to escape from a German camp during World War II. Most were immediately sent to Arbeitskommandos (work details). On April 27, 1942, all the Poles were transferred to other camps, mostly to Oflag VII-A Murnau. Lamont Johnson In September 1943, 630 merchant seamen from India, China, Burma and Aden were moved out of the Milag into a new camp, Milag (Inder) (known as the Inderlager or "Indian Camp") west of Westertimke. District XI Nearest city Kassel, in the centre of Germany. Jake Maskall, Consequently, additional documentation is sometimes attached. On 18 December 1944 the camp was bombed by U.S. aircraft. | The camp was liberated by the Red Army on the morning of 12 April 1945. Originally opened in July1942the camp reported having 42other ranks on 26th February 1943. Article 76 had several agreements designed to ensure that POWs who died whilst in captivity were honourably buried and in marked graves, this did not always happen especially on the long marches in 1945. Their escape, on 14 October 1942, took place with two other officers. The remainder of the camp was then separated and taken over by the SS to house Jews intended for shipment overseas in exchange for German civilians. Girot KIA: Gestapo, May 1944. There was a military hospital also at this location, it held 2 British, 3703 US, 9053 Soviet, 840 Yugoslav, 2200 Italian and 15514 French Pows as of February 1945 (Shaef reports). At one time there were over 30,000 jammed into facilities designed for 15,000. In 1944, as forced labour by concentration camp prisoners became increasingly important in armaments production, a Focke-Wulf aircraft factory was constructed at Stutthof. Red Cross parcels were not permitted to be sent to the disarmed prisoners of the Axis forces after the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945 as they were not classified as POWs at this stage. 'Moritz' and 'Max' (second dummy) were made of plaster by a fellow Polish POW and painted by another Dutch POW, Lieutenant Diederick van Lynden. The first was about 12 m (40 ft) long, built from March to August 1943. The castle was then used as an Internment Camp Ilag VII for men from the British Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey until the camp was liberated in May 1945. The camp opened in May 1941 as Oflag 68, but was renamed Stalag I-F in June 1942. The first officers from the battle of Greece arrived on 16 June 1941. Ian Hendry, The Germans built one concentration camp and three labour camps on the island, subcamps of the Neuengamme concentration camp (located in Hamburg, Germany). In 1941 more prisoners arrived from the Balkans Campaign mostly British and Yugoslavians (mostly Serbs). 18,307 POWs with 550 Officers here in Bavaria. On 28 January 1945 the POWs were assembled and marched westward, but after two days they were liberated by the Soviet Red Army. The construction of the second camp, Lager-Ost ("East Compound") began in June 1941 to accommodate the large numbers of Soviet prisoners taken in Operation Barbarossa. Adjacent to Klitshcmar railway station 271 British POWs held. The camp was opened in September 1940 on what had been originally intended to be a military airfield. In the summer of 1941 Australians and New Zealanders captured in Greece and Crete during the Balkans Campaign arrived in the camp. Oflag IV-D Elsterhorst was a World War II German Army Prisoner-of-war camp for Allied officers located near Hoyerswerda in Saxony, 44 km north-east of Dresden. Naturally all incoming and outgoing mail was censored. Tell us what you think about this feature. Capt E.W. In the third section were 8,000 civilian prisoners in appalling conditions, described in the Army medical history as "utterly horrifying"; "everywhere the dead and dying sprawled amid the slime of human excrement.". Civilians who were officially attached to military units, such as war correspondents, were provided with the same treatment as military personnel by the Conventions. There were certainly US (and British?) Claudette Colbert, | It was located 2 km (1.2 mi) north of the Bavarian town of Murnau am Staffelsee. They crossed a bridge over the river Oder on 21 January, reached Goldberg on 5 February, and were loaded onto a train. Digital files of films and sound recordings are available at cost depending on intended use. The camp was reopened in 1 October 1939 to house Polish generals and their staffs captured during the German September 1939 offensive. The 357 designation was later transferred to Oerbke near Fallingbostel. It was intended to hold up to 20,000 Soviet POWs and was one of three such camps in the area. In some camps recipients of these parcels were permitted to keep only the cigarettes and chocolate bars; the remainder of the parcel was turned over to the camp cook, who combined them with the contents of other parcels and German POW rations (usually bread, barley, potatoes, cabbage and horse meat) to create daily meals for the prisoners. Feldpost- a postal address for military use, these usually have a 5 digit number designation and would be prefixed M for Naval addresses and L for Air Force addresses. Inmates were cleaned and transferred to an improvised hospital outside the camp and thence to convalescence camps. Fascism's European Empire - Davide Rodogno [see here]. Some great stories, but it can also be a bit slow. in September 1943 PG60 was turned into a concentration camp for political prisoners and Jews. This was a general rule, although there are plenty of reports the Germans misused this to force labour on troops that would aid the German war effort. Every evening the guards would dump out the meal for the day on the muddy earth. This mine was taken over by IG Farben in 1943, in the July of that year after an inspection by IG Farben the POWs were sent elsewhere and replaced by Auschwitz KL prisoners instead. All PW camps in Italy had postal marks which indicated the central postal reception area for the camps mail, several camps could (and did) have the same code as it was area based. camp, and is mistakenly awarded with the Iron Cross by the Germans. 13 August: Within days after their arrival, the Dutch escape officer, Captain Machiel van den Heuvel (known as 'Vandy'), planned and executed his first of many escape plans. When the offensive of the Soviet Red Army resumed in 1945, all inmates were marched westward on 28 January 1945. From the 15th of August 1940 there were 356 officers and 140 other ranks. During the Second World, War Oflag IV-C, situated in the thousand-year-old Colditz Castle, was one of the most famous German Army prisoner-of-war camps for enemy officers. Also, individuals were allowed to bring to official notice any other matters, such as courageous acts by fellow prisoners or details of civilians who assisted them during escape and evasion activities. These were prisoners who defied the Nazis, attempted to escape , or were just generally hard to handle. 00:00. Set up in September 1943, it housed about 1200 prisoners, mostly British. BAB -Bau-und Arbeits Battalion (construction battalion). A POW camp for Soviets adjacent to Stalag VIII-B Lamsdorf, it also held Romanians, Greeks and Italians. During WW2, German POWs in Britain plot to escape from their prison camp in Scotland. Virginia McKenna, Besides, many reports include appendices which can provide the names and addresses of civilian helpers, nature of help given, and relevant dates; details of the escape method and fellow POWs who assisted in an escape; the usefulness of officially provided escape aids, which ones were used, and suggested improvements and/or additions. Building the Colditz Glider. The camp was located at Waggum near Braunschweig in Germany, also known by the English name of Brunswick. District VI Nearest city Wroclaw, Poland (German name: Breslau). The British had begun an escape tunnel, and the Poles continued working on it, and on 20 September 1943, 47 of them escaped. The 7 forts above which comprised Stalag 312 were also administered by Stalag 20A. The first evacuation occurred on 29 January, 1945 in blizzard conditions. Washing and laundering is done in the courtyard, where the linen is hung out for drying. They were employed building new barracks and a water supply. In 1943 2,500 British Commonwealth soldiers came from the battles in Italy, and later in the same year an undefined number of Italian soldiers came from Albania. After the French campaign French prisoners of war were imprisoned here. The camp was evacuated in January 1945 as the Red Army approached At 11:00 PM on 27 January 1945 Germans marched the POWs out of Stalag 3 with Spremberg for their destination. Discover Colditz Castle in Colditz, Germany: An officers prison camp believed to be impregnable by the Germans saw over 30 successful escapes. District VIII Nearest city Koblenz, In the middle west area of Germany. The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz - Denis Avey [see here]. They hatched a plan to escape through a kitchen window and then make a dash to freedom, through the courtyard and through the walls across the dry moat to the final row of barbed wire. In September 1943, as the Italian government neared collapse, the inmates of Sulmona heard rumours that the evacuation of the camp was imminent. The guard in the machinegun-tower later told other prisoners that he refrained from shooting Upham out of sheer respect.. They included 4,000 Africans from French colonial units. They awoke one morning to discover that their guards had deserted them. These magazines were published monthly and sent to prisoners families. Later they were replaced by Army reservists. E715 IG Farben chemical factory in Monowitz. 30,957 other ranks with 66 officers upon liberation reported, however according to other SHAEF reports from February 1945 the make up was: 8379 Soviets, 5563 Belgian, 23 Poles, 2733 Yugoslavs, 624 Italians,10027 French. In May 1940 as the building work progressed small groups of Polish officers were transferred in from other POW camps. The castle sits on a steep hill overlooking the Mulde River as it flows through the small Saxon town of Colditz, about 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Leipzig. District IV In the Lower eastern part of Germany bordering the Czech Republic in the south and Poland in the east, nearest large city Magdeburg/Dresden. There are four primary sources for post-armistice escape reports for Italy: https://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/hire-a-researcher/about and WO 208/5393-5404 contain reports made by escapers who travelled south to Allied lines; WO 208/4238-4276 and WO 208/4368-4371 hold reports made by those who made it to neutral Switzerland. Another attempt occurred when he was being moved between prison camps on a civilian train while guarded by two Germans. Opened October 1940, closed March 1944 and redesignated as Oflag 67 (LXVII). Railway station 271 British POWs held dump out the meal for the day the. 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