Oflag IV- C - Wikipedia. Oflag IV- C, often referred to as Colditz Castle because of its location, was one of the most noted German Armyprisoner- of- war camps for captured enemy officers during World War II; Oflag is a shortening of Offizierslager, meaning . It was located in Colditz Castle situated on a cliff overlooking the town of Colditz in Saxony. Its outer walls were seven feet (two meters) thick and the cliff on which it was built had a sheer drop of two hundred and fifty feet (7. River Mulde below. In one of the most ambitious escape attempts from Colditz, the idea of building a glider was dreamt up by two British pilots, Jack Best and Bill Goldfinch, who had. Some rules and guidelines: (new Whirlpool members, pay close attention) All the usual Whirlpool Rules must be adhered to. This includes no foul language and no. Oflag IV-C, often referred to as Colditz Castle because of its location, was one of the most noted German Army prisoner-of-war camps for captured enemy officers. Of course the return of 'The Walking Dead' is on our radar this month. See which other movies and TV shows we're excited about in IMDb Picks. However, later most of them were transferred to other Oflags. By Christmas 1. 94. Polish officers, 1. Belgians, 5. 0 French, and 3. British, a total of no more than 2. A number of the French demanded that French Jewish officers be segregated from them and the camp commander obliged; they were moved to the attics. By the end of July 1. French, 1. 50 Polish, 5. British and Commonwealth, 2 Yugoslavian. In April 1. 94. 1, a French officer, Alain Le Ray, become the first prisoner ever to escape from the Colditz Castle. On 2. 4 July, 6. 8 Dutch officers arrived, mostly members of the Royal Dutch East Indies Army, who had refused to sign a declaration that they would take no part in the war against Germany. According to the German Security Officer, Captain Reinhold Eggers, the Dutch officers appeared to be model prisoners at first. Importantly for other internees in the camp, among the 6. Dutch was Hans Larive with his knowledge of the Singen route. This route into Switzerland was discovered by Larive in 1. Oflag in Soest. Larive was caught at the Swiss border near Singen. The interrogating Gestapo officer was so confident the war would soon be won by Germany that he told Larive the safe way across the border near Singen. Larive did not forget and many prisoners later escaped using this route. On 1. 3 August the first two Dutchmen escaped successfully from the castle followed by many more of which six officers made it to England. Afterwards a number of would- be escapees would borrow Dutch greatcoats as their disguise. When the Wehrmacht invaded the Netherlands they were short on material for uniforms, so they confiscated anything available. The coats in Dutch field grey in particular remained unchanged in colour, since it was similar to the tone already in use by the Germans, thus these greatcoats would be nearly identical with very minor alterations. By the end of July there were a few Free French officers, and 2. British officers, with a contingent consisting of Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Irish, and one Indian. On 2. 3 August Colditz received its first Americans: 4. Colonel Florimund Duke . They were all counter- intelligence operatives parachuted into Hungary to prevent it joining forces with Germany. Population was approximately 2. On 1. 9 January six French Generals . Major- General Gustave Marie Maurice Mesny was killed on the way from K. The door flanked by bushes was the entrance to the . Note the cutout depiction of Lieutenant Bouley to the lower left hand side of the photograph. There were also prisoners called Prominente (German for 'celebrities'), relatives of Allied VIPs. The first one was Giles Romilly, a civilian journalist who was captured in Narvik, Norway who was also a nephew of Winston Churchill's wife. Adolf Hitler himself specified that Romilly was to be treated with the utmost care and that: The Kommandant and Security Officer answer for Romilly's security with their heads. His security is to be assured by any and every exceptional measure you care to take. L to R: John Alexander Elphinstone, Max de Hamel, Michael Alexander, unknown, George Lascelles, and John Winant Jr. Eventually there were Viscount George Lascelles and John Alexander Elphinstone, 1. Lord Elphinstone, nephews of British King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother; Captain George Haig, son of WWI field marshal Douglas Haig; Charles Hope, son of Victor Hope, the Viceroy of India; Lieutenant John Winant Jr., son of John Gilbert Winant, US ambassador to Britain; Tadeusz B. Burn had been a journalist like Romilly before the war, working for The Times. Burn had briefly been an admirer of the Nazi Party and in 1. Adolf Hitler, who signed his copy of Mein Kampf. After war broke out Burn shifted politically to Marxism and gave lectures to prisoners at Colditz, but due to his pre- war interest in Nazi philosophy he was widely regarded with distrust and scorn. John Arundell, 1. Baron Arundell of Wardour (1. Arundell made a habit of exercising in the winter snow; he contracted tuberculosis and died in Chester Military Hospital. Another officer, not listed as among the Prominente but who became famous after the end of the war, was French military chaplain and Catholic priest Yves Congar, who was captured as a POW and later sent there after repeated attempts to escape. He became a noted theologian and was made cardinal in 1. The Allies and prisoners became especially concerned that the Prominente might be used as hostages, bargaining chips and human shields, or that the SS might try to kill them out of spite; they prepared for resistance and, if possible, to take over the castle. The Germans moved all the Prominente out of the castle, over the protestations of the other prisoners. With his aid they reached American lines a couple of weeks later. He would later receive a lessened sentence after his hearing in 1. Prominente. New Zealander Charles Upham VC and Bar was held captive at Olflag IVC from 1. October 1. 94. 4 until Colditz was liberated in 1. The German staff and visitors. Between the years 1. German officers and enlisted men worked in a wide variety of staff positions, as well as overseeing prisoners' labour. Some were in maintenance, some in medical roles, some were there in a supervisory role (Nazi Party leaders, Swiss Red Cross observers, etc.). Some family members of the German military officers lived at the camp. He was also the only English- speaker among the Germans at Colditz, thus was involved in every interaction with the prisoners or between the Senior Officers and the Kommandant serving as translator. In principle, the security officers recognized that it was the duty of the POWs to try to escape and that their own job was to stop them. Prisoners could even form gentlemen's agreements with the guards, such as not using borrowed tools for escape attempts. Most of the guard company was composed of WWI veterans and young soldiers not fit for the front. Because Colditz was a high security camp, the Germans organized three and then later four Appells (roll calls) per day to count the prisoners. If they discovered someone had escaped, they alerted every police and train station within a 4. Hitler Youth would help to recapture any escapees. Because of the number of Red Cross food parcels, prisoners sometimes ate better than their guards, who had to rely on Wehrmacht rations. Prisoners could use their relative luxuries for trade and, for example, exchange their cigarettes for German Reichsmarks that they hoped could later use in their escape attempts. Occasionally this turned to be a mistake as several of the bills they received were of the earlier Papiermark varieties that were no longer considered valid. There were also other currencies in circulation, including the Registermark, utilized for travelling and investments in Germany; the Reisemark, for tourists; the Kreditsperrmark, for sales of property belonging to foreigners; the Effektensperrmark, arising from the sale of securities in Germany; the Reichskreditkassenschein in occupied territories; and the Behelfszahlungsmittel (Auxiliary Payment Certificates) for the German Armed Forces. The Kreditsperrmark and Effektensperrmark were consolidated into the Handelsperrmark in 1. Because of the massive variety of currency types and uses, in several escape attempts, escapees with one of these various currencies printed before 1. In August 1. 94. 1 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. Prisoners also formed a Polish choir, a Dutch Hawaiian guitar band, and a French orchestra. Several prisoners intentionally grew their hair long so as better to portray female roles. Prisoner Jock Hamilton- Baillie used to shave his legs, rub them in brown shoe polish, and draw a line down the back of his legs in pencil to simulate the appearance of silk stockings. This allowed him special . Staging these plays even gained the prisoners access to . During the summer months, the theatre's peak periods, there were new productions every two weeks. The biggest success of the theatre however would be the Christmas themed Ballet Nonsense which premiered on November 1. November 1. 8, 1. Hauptmann Priem (the first prison warden of Colditz) attended. Initially started by the Polish contingent using a recipe of yeast, water, German jam and sugar from their Red Cross parcels, and then taken up by other prisoners, it did not take long for stills to be secreted all across Colditz (one of which remained undiscovered until a tourist trip in 1. Prisoner Michael Farr, whose family ran Hawker's Gin (the sole purveyors of Sloe gin with a Royal Warrant), managed to make a sparkling wine dubbed . Some prisoners would get black teeth or even temporary blindness from consuming this beverage . Although the German guards despised the drunken prisoners, they generally turned a blind eye to the distilling. Officers also studied languages, learning from each other, and told stories. Most popular of these stories were the embellished retelling of BBC broadcasts by Jim Rogers. Since mail was regularly screened by censors, and the German newspapers received by prisoners contained much Nazi propaganda, the only reliable information prisoners could obtain on the progress of the war in Europe was through BBC broadcasts received via one of two radios which were secreted in the castle.
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