The Colditz Story

Product Information

As the only Indian in Colditz, he was shunned by fellow British Army officers. Macintyre said: “He suffered terribly in a way that was shaming, really. He was treated with appalling racism. He was regarded as a second class citizen… told he had to make curry for everyone. Even for the time, it was pretty brutal, racist behaviour.” Liniennetz Landkreis Leipzig, Region Muldental" (PDF). Mitteldeutscher Verkehrsverbund. 11 December 2016. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 March 2017 . Retrieved 8 March 2017. Map of bus services in the area In the Nazi era, Colditz Castle was temporarily used as a concentration camp by the SA and as a Reichsarbeitsdienst camp. During the Second World War, the town did not suffer any damage. In 1940, the town became the headquarters of the German military district Wehrkreis IV for personnel guarding an Oflag POW camp for officers, when Oflag IV-C was established in the castle. It became widely known after the war, for both its notable inmates ( Prominente), such as Giles Romilly or George Lascelles, and several escape attempts. Another was Giles Romilly, a Daily Express journalist and nephew of Winston Churchill, held against the Geneva Convention among the so-called "prominente", high-value prisoners kept as hostages. It was boring, they were hungry a lot of the time, and it was dangerous. Anyone trying to escape after 1943 really was putting their life on the line."

Royal Navy ERAs W. E. "Wally" Hammond (from the sunken submarine HMS Shark) and Don "Tubby" Lister (from the captured submarine HMS Seal) campaigned for a transfer from Colditz, arguing that they were not officers. They were transferred to Lamsdorf prison, escaped from a Breslau work party, and reached England via Switzerland in 1943. [9] [10] [11] Alongside class distinctions, there was mental illness, anti-Semitism (French officers ostracised their Jewish comrades, forcing them to eat separately), collaboration and racism. Quite crucially, by no means everyone was desperate to escape. IWM (March 1989). "IWM interview [with Lorne Welch]". IWM Collections Search . Retrieved 15 April 2013. The writer and journalist said that the “myth” of Colditz was partly formed in the national psyche by the 1972 BBC series of the same name.

Keeping the castle running in a secure and efficient manner was a difficult task, and the Germans maintained a larger garrison at the castle than at many of their other prison camps. Between 1939 and 1945 more than 70 German officers and enlisted men worked in a wide variety of staff positions, as well as overseeing prisoners' labour. [1] Reid was married three times; firstly in 1943 to Jane Cabot. They had three sons and two daughters, and were divorced in 1966. His second marriage in 1977 to Mary Stewart Cunliffe-Lister ended in 1978, with her death. In 1982 he married his third wife, Nicandra Hood, but they separated after a few years. [ citation needed] He died at Frenchay Hospital, Bristol, [7] on 22 May 1990, at the age of 79. [2] Other activities [ ]

Eggers, Reinhold (1961). Colditz: The German Story. Barnsley: Pen and Sword Books. ISBN 1-84415-536-6. Members of the Prominente, under a U.S. guard, outside the Hungerberg Hotel on May 5, 1945, shortly after their release. L to R: John Elphinstone, Max de Hamel, Michael Alexander, unknown, George Lascelles, and John Winant Jr. [1] Johann David Köhler house – the grandfather of information science and a grandfather of library science was born here 16 January 1684.Prisoners had to make their own entertainment. In August 1941 the first camp Olympics were organized by the Polish prisoners. Events were held in football (soccer), volleyball, boxing, and chess, but the closing ceremony was interrupted by a German fire drill. "The British came in last place in every event cheerfully, to the dismay of the other participants who took the competition deadly seriously," according to the British inmate John Wilkens in a 1986 interview. Prisoners also formed a Polish choir, a Dutch Hawaiian guitar band, and a French orchestra. [1] Reid remained in Switzerland until after the end of the war, serving as an Assistant Military Attaché in Bern from 9 March 1943 until early 1946, and receiving promotion to Temporary Major on 1 November 1945. [2] He was unusually discreet about his duties there, and was in fact working for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) gathering intelligence from arriving escapees. [9] Postwar [ edit ]

Drue Heinz, and the little literary mystery of a wartime striptease". phoenixarkpress.com . http://phoenixarkpress.com/2010/12/15/drue-heinz-and-the-literary-mystery-of-a-wartime-striptease/ . Retrieved 10 October 2011. British Army Officers 1939–1945 (Radford to Rutherford)". unithistories.com. 2011 . http://www.unithistories.com/officers/Army_officers_R01.html . Retrieved 5 May 2013.The English are unique, what other nation in the world would arrange such a things as Keith has done. To fly me from Germany to open this exhibition? It was a French Officer Lieutenant Alain Le Ray of the 159e Régiment d’Infanterie Alpine who first escaped the seemingly impenetrable fortress, breaking out on 11 April 1941. Rather than relying on months of planning and preparations, Le Ray’s was a ‘snap’ escape. He recognized an oversight by the Germans when escorting prisoners to the castle park for their exercise periods – a bend in the pathway where, for a matter of seconds, the party would be out of sight of the Germans. He seized this opening, hiding in the undergrowth until the party had returned to the castle, then taking shelter in the cellar of a ruined summerhouse to wait for the cover of darkness, when he was able to slip away to freedom. This episode was drawn from the real-life events involving Lieutenant Ryszard Bednarski, a Polish army officer in Colditz who turned informer apparently after the Gestapo threatened his family. Though the court-martial did in fact take place, in reality the Polish Senior Officer requested the Colditz commandant to remove Bednarski from the camp; Bednarski survived his imprisonment but committed suicide after the war upon meeting a fellow Colditz prisoner in Poland. The incident also inspired a subplot in The Colditz Story.) On 23 August 1944 Colditz received its first Americans: 49-year-old Colonel Florimund Duke — the oldest American paratrooper of the war, Captain Guy Nunn, and Alfred Suarez. They were all counter-intelligence operatives parachuted into Hungary to prevent it joining forces with Germany. Population was approximately 254 at the start of the early winter that year. Escape Officers – Colditz". colditzcastle.net. Archived from the original on 17 January 2013 . Retrieved 11 November 2014.