The Daily Telegraph - Features
Escape to Colditz: my night in the notorious Nazi prison
William Cook stays in the former POW camp to learn about daring wartime breakouts in its new museum
Looking out of my bedroom window in Schloss Colditz, I find it hard to fathom how anyone ever managed to get out of here. Below me is a sheer 100-foot drop, then a high wall, then another 100-foot drop, into a fast-flowing river that flanks this castle like a moat. In the heart of Hitler’s Reich, 400 miles from any Allied or neutral border, no wonder it was renowned as the most secure prisoner of war camp in Nazi Germany, designed to thwart even the most intrepid and ingenious escape.
Yet incredibly, during the Second World War, 30 Allied prisoners escaped from here, dodging the German guards who patrolled this castle day and night. Armed with forged identity papers, disguised in civilian clothes or Nazi uniforms, they traversed several hundred miles of enemy territory on their “home runs”, often southbound to neutral Switzerland.
How did they manage it? To find out, I’ve come to Colditz – to stay in the youth hostel within the castle and sneak a preview of a new museum in the wing where hundreds of Allied soldiers were imprisoned.
Arriving here, your first view of the castle could scarcely be more dramatic. On a sunny day it looks romantic, but as darkness falls, it takes on a more sinister air. A cluster of towers and robust battlements, cloaked by thick forest, it looms over the surrounding countryside like the setting for a Hammer Horror film.
Built in the Middle Ages, Schloss Colditz was a fortified palace for several centuries, and then a hospital, before becoming a Nazi POW camp. As every British schoolboy used to know, most of its inmates had been recaptured after escaping from other camps elsewhere in the Reich. It was a fortress in an isolated location and the Germans thought Colditz would be inescapable. These prisoners rose to the challenge.
The British and Commonwealth contingent (including POWs from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India) grew from a few dozen in 1941 to more than 200 in 1943, but there were other nationalities here too – French, Belgian, Dutch and Polish. Whisper it, but the success rate of Continental escapers was actually a lot better than the Brits.
The French achieved the most home runs: 12 (out of 24 attempts). The Dutch managed seven (out of 17) and the Poles just one (out of 18). Belgium, with one home run from one attempt, achieved the only 100 per cent success rate. Yet the fact that Brits made the most escape attempts (by far) is a special badge of honour: 120 attempts, including 11 home runs.
Successful or not, all of these attempts were daring and inspiring, requiring considerable courage and painstaking preparation. Some were heroic failures, like the “60 Second Escape”, in which two British officers, Jack Best and Mike Sinclair, took advantage of a one-minute gap during the daily changing of the guard to abseil down the walls before the searchlights were switched on at dusk. They broke out of the castle and made it all the way across Germany, only to be captured miles from the Dutch border.
Others were spectacularly successful, like the “Laundry Men’s Escape”, in which six escapers masqueraded as the daily laundry duty, taking washing to the town below. Two Dutchmen, who spoke fluent German, were dressed as Nazi officers. The four Britons were dressed as Polish orderlies. Their clothes were made in secret, on a homemade sewing machine.
Most inventive were the “Roll Call Ghosts” – Jack Best (yes, him again) and Mike Harvey, who disappeared in 1943, and were presumed to have escaped. In fact, they never left the camp. They remained here in hiding, only reappearing during daily roll calls where they took the places of other inmates who really had escaped.
With so many stirring tales like these, it was no surprise that Colditz captured the imagination of the postwar British public. However, here in Germany it was a different story. Liberated by US troops in 1945, Colditz wasn’t a scene of Nazi atrocities, like so many other places in Germany, but nor was it something for Germans to commemorate or celebrate.
When Germany was divided into East and West, Colditz ended up in the Soviet zone and disappeared behind the Iron Curtain. For 45 years thereafter, it was almost impossible for Westerners to visit, and so in Britain it became a kind of legend. Everyone knew the name, but no one knew what had become of it. With scant interest in its wartime past, the East Germans turned it back into a hospital.
After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 Colditz became accessible to Western visitors. However, when I first went there in 2004, there wasn’t much to see. It was exciting, then as now, to step inside this historic site, but the building was drab and eerie. Much of it was shut off, awaiting renovation, and the museum was rudimentary.
Returning here 20 years later, I’m amazed to find how much has changed. The castle has been beautifully restored, but is still sparse and striking. The museum is spread across several rooms. The original exhibits include false passports, fake guns and uniforms, and homemade tools designed for everything from picking locks to digging tunnels – all made from foraged odds and ends, under the noses of the guards.
The rest of the building has been left bare. Instead of the corny reconstructions you often see elsewhere, an electronic tablet guides you through these empty rooms and repopulates them with computerised recreations of guards and inmates. Click on these images and a wealth of information is revealed: old photographs, archive documents and so on. You can even plot your own escape, collecting essential equipment en route.
My night in the youth hostel was intensely atmospheric. It’s actually in the part of the castle where German guards rather than Allied prisoners were housed, but it’s still thrilling to spend a night within the castle walls.
STAY AT COLDITZ The new museum at Schloss Colditz (schloss-colditz.de) is now open. Accommodation in the adjoining youth hostel, in dormitory bedrooms, costs from €42.50 (£36) per night for adults, with various reductions for under-27s. Fly direct to Leipzig or Berlin – from Leipzig to Colditz, by train and bus, takes around an hour. For more information visit germany.travel.
At night, Colditz looms over the countryside like the setting for a Hammer Horror film