Colditz (4 page)

“What convention?”

“The convention about prisoners of war.”

“Do you know Latin? If you do, you should realize that the word convention comes from the word
convenire
. And for
convenire
, two parties are necessary. The Geneva Convention has ceased to be applied to you because Poland has ceased to exist. It has been extinguished by
way of debellatio, an accepted concept of international law. You are now a subject of the Reich who for security reasons has been placed in internment for the duration of the war. It is only an act of benevolence and also a matter of convenience that you have all been put under a regime which is essentially an application of principles similar to those of the Geneva Convention, but with some exceptions. One of these exceptions is that you are not permitted under the penalty of death to try to escape. And remember: whatever privileges you enjoy, the privilege of being treated as an officer and so on, are not your right, but only a favor which was given but may be withdrawn.”

I replied that a debellatio of Poland had not taken place because the invasion and conquest of Poland had started a world war and this war was still in progress, which meant that neither had the Polish resistance ceased nor had the collapse of Poland been tacitly recognized by the community of nations. Besides, I was sufficiently well informed to know that the Polish government had settled in Paris; that a new Polish Army was being organized in France and a part of the Polish Navy, of which I was an officer, had reached Great Britain and continued to fight. Poland still legally existed and we were her subjects; not subjects of the Reich. What I was now told was a violation of international law.

“Poland has ceased to exist and will never rise again,” answered Doctor Falke.

“
Deus mirabilis, fortuna variabilis
,” I replied. “These are well-known words which were said by a prominent Pole three hundred years ago on the occasion of a similar Polish defeat. They were proved right at that time and at other times. And they will prove to be right again.”

The two Germans whispered something among themselves—and then Doctor Falke said: “With your attitude you cannot hope for an improvement in your condition.”

The conversation was finished and I was sent back to my cell.

That conversation explained clearly to me that it was not the intention of the German Army to apply the Geneva Convention towards us, Polish prisoners. This is certainly true. And I cannot deny that I left Doctor Falke's office indignant and angry.

A short time after he arrived in Murnau, three other Polish officers were brought to the camp and placed in the solitary cells beside him. They were Captain Majewski, the chief of staff of the Polish Navy, who had
signed, at dawn on 2 October 1939, the surrender of the peninsula of Hel, having been sent by Rear-Admiral Unrug to confirm in writing the arrangements agreed by telephone; Colonel Mozdyniewicz, commander of the Polish 17th Infantry Division, who, in the September campaign, undertook a local counter-offensive against the German Army and obtained a local victory, inflicting severe losses on the Germans and causing some large German units to retreat in disorder for several days; and Lieutenant Paweł Jasiński.

Majewski and Mozdyniewicz were sent to the “solitary” because of their unwelcome patriotic influence in their earlier
Oflag
, Jasiński because of an escape. Originally they could not communicate with each other, but later on they were allowed to meet sometimes in one cell (for the first time on Christmas Eve 1939) and to subscribe for one copy of the German newspaper
Völkischer Beobachter
, which they read in turn. In January 1940, two more prisoners were brought in and placed in the two other cells. Both were from the local
Oflag
of Murnau. One of them was General Tadeusz Piskor, who in the 1920s and early 1930s had been chief of staff of the Polish Army and who, during the September campaign, had been commander of one of the Polish armies, the Lublin Army. The second was Major Władysław Steblik, before the war deputy military attaché at the Polish embassy in Berlin and, during the campaign, the operations officer of the Cracow Army. (After the war he became well known as the writer of a scholarly book on the history of the Cracow Army in the September campaign.) So now they were six in this solitary confinement block attached to the Murnau
Oflag
. They all went later to Colditz.

But they were there as six only for twenty-four hours. The next day, after the arrival of Piskor and Steblik, all six were moved by train to Srebrna Góra in the Sudeten mountains in Middle Silesia. They travelled there via Vienna, through the Czechoslovak province of Moravia nad Wroclaw. Jędrzej considered the possibility of escaping on the way, then trying to go by train to neutral Italy, but he rejected the idea as the temperatures were well below freezing and the snow very deep. There was no chance of success. In Srebrna Góra they were joined early in January by Admiral Unrug.

The Germans had organized an “isolation” camp, smaller than Colditz but larger than the six cells in Murnau, at an ancient fort on top of a mountain not far from the small town, called Srebrna Góra in Polish, Silberberg in German. The town belonged to Poland in the Middle Ages, was later in the possession of Bohemia and Austria, and came, in the eighteenth century, under Prussian rule. The population was Germanized. Srebrna Góra was beyond the Polish-German linguistic border and was German-speaking. It was situated
in a separate mountain-chain called Gory Sowie, or Eulengebirge, which means “Mountains of the Owls.” During the Seven Years War (1756–1763), the Prussian king, Frederick the Great, had built three forts on mountain tops, dominating the passage from Silesia to Moravia. One of these forts, Fort Spitzberg, became the mini-Colditz. It was a very unpleasant place, and had served previously as a mountain shelter for the Hitler Youth. Several underground bunkers had recently been adapted as sleeping quarters. They resembled cellars and were very wet. In the vaulted ceilings, there were stalactites already ten centimeters long.

When Jędrzej's group arrived, there were already seven Polish prisoners there. They had come the previous day and were all unsuccessful escapers. Their number increased every few days, especially when spring began. More and more escapers were hauled in. Several of them, Jędrzej included, tried to escape from Fort Spitzberg, but no one ever succeeded.

There was room for ninety prisoners and this number was soon reached. In April 1940 the Germans set up a similar camp at the nearby Fort Hohenstein and twenty prisoners, amongst them Jędrzej, were moved from Fort Spitzberg to Fort Hohenstein.

Towards the end of May 1940, ten officers were able to escape from there. They climbed through a hole made in the wall of a room that had been barred off from the prison and descended on a rope made from cotton sleeping-bags into the shallow moat. The remaining ten officers covered the escape successfully. It was discovered twenty-four hours later at the morning
Appell
or roll-call. The German commander of their
Oflag
was later tried by court-martial, because fifty percent of the inmates of Fort Hohenstein had escaped!

The escapers travelled in three separate groups. They had no civilian clothes so they went on foot, sleeping in forests during the day and walking, guided by the stars, at night. They intended to reach neutral Hungary. One group of three succeeded. Another group was caught after three days. Jędrzej's group (the other members were Michal Niczko and Zdzisław Ficek) marched for twelve nights and reached the environs of the town of Olomouc in Czechoslovakia, halfway to Hungary. They were caught there and brought back to Srebrna Góra and the Fort of Hohenstein. The German
Kommandant
informed them of the fall of Paris and the approaching end of the war. They spent their time in solitary confinement, instead of being shot as they had expected, until the seven of them who had been recaptured were transferred once more to Fort Spitzberg. Soon afterwards, more prisoners were brought to Fort Hohenstein. When the maximum of fifty was reached (forty-nine Poles and one French airman) at
Fort Hohenstein, and ninety at Fort Spitzberg, the whole Srebrna Góra contingent, including Admiral Unrug and General Piskor, was transferred to Colditz, which officially became the “special” camp for escapers and other unwelcome prisoners. This was on 1 November 1940. Initially there were only these Poles and the Frenchman.

Three RAF officers arrived on 5 November and six British Army officers on 7 November, followed later by some more French. So the Castle became an international camp for selected “special” prisoners.

On his arrival Jędrzej was greeted like an old friend by Priem, now promoted to
Hauptmann
(captain).

During the period from October 1939 to October 1940 when Colditz had been a transit camp, Poles were not the only incumbents. They left for other destinations in the early summer of 1940. A large number of Belgian officers, prisoners of war, were held there during the summer, replacing the Poles. According to Hauptmann Eggers, who was an
Oberleutnant
(lieutenant) at Colditz in 1939–1940, the Belgians were released on a “general parole” to return to their country.

On 1 November 1940, the German command at Colditz Castle consisted of the camp commandant (
Herr Kommandant
), Oberstleutnant (Lieutenant-Colonel) Schmidt. His second-in-command was Major Menz. The adjutant was Hauptmann Kunze. The principal camp officer, responsible for the administration and discipline of the POWs, was Hauptmann Priem. His assistant was Eggers.

Eggers says that at the beginning the German staff were quite naive about “security.” He states: “When I arrived at the Castle I found many meters of good rope hanging in the bell tower, quite openly.” There were two security officers, Hauptmann Hans Lange and Hauptmann Lossell. The camp doctor was Hauptmann Dr. Rahm, who bore the familiar title of
der Arzt
, meaning “the doctor,” and also (for the prisoners) a more familiar ribald title of
der Tierarzt
, meaning “the horse-doctor” or “vet.” The staff paymaster was Rittmeister Heinze.

When the Polish contingent of 140 arrived on 1 November 1940, the camp was empty. The Castle, besides being called a
Sonderlager
(“special camp”), was also labelled
Lager mit besonderer Bewachung
(“camp with special surveillance”).

The
Kommandant
, Oberstleutnant Schmidt, addressed the Polish contingent at the first
Appell
upon their arrival. Part of his speech was as follows:

According to dispositions set out in the Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners of war, the
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
has
instituted this Special Prisoner-of-War Camp,
Oflag
IVC Colditz into which you Poles have been admitted as an exceptional case. Poland no longer exists and it is only due to the magnanimity of our Führer that you are benefiting temporarily from the privileges such as will be accorded to prisoners of war of the other belligerent powers who will be held in this camp. You should be grateful to Adolf Hitler who, by his decision, has favored you. You, who in 1939 by your stupid obstinacy were responsible for starting this war.

The three RAF officers who arrived on 5 November were Flying Officers Howard D. Wardle, Keith Milne and Donald Middleton. Wardle, or Hank as he was called, was a Canadian who had joined the RAF shortly before the war. He was dropping propaganda leaflets over Germany in April 1940 when his bomber was shot down. He parachuted and landed in trees. He was one of the earliest British POWs of the war. He had escaped from the
Schloss
camp of Spangenburg, about twenty miles from Kassel, by climbing a high barricade on the way to a gymnasium just outside the camp precincts. The other two, also Canadians, had escaped dressed as painters, complete with buckets of whitewash and a long ladder, which they carried between them. They had waited for a suitable moment when there appeared to be a particularly dumb Jerry on guard at the gate, marched up briskly, shouted the only words they knew in German and filed out. Having passed the gate, they continued jauntily until they were half-way down the hill on which the
Schloss
reposed. They then jettisoned ladder and buckets and made a bolt for the woods.

These escapes were in August 1940 and were probably the first of the war from regular camps. None of the three travelled very far before recapture and it was, alas, only a matter of hours before they were back behind the bars. They suffered badly at the hands of their captors, being severely kicked and battered with rifle-butts.

The three RAF officers had arrived in Colditz at night and had seen no one. They were told that sentences awaited them and that they would probably be shot. On the first morning at dawn they had been marched out to some woods in a deep valley flanking one side of the Castle and halted beside a high granite wall. They had then been told to exercise themselves for half an hour! The Germans took a sadistic pleasure in putting the complete wind up the three of them. By the time they had reached the high wall in the early half-light, they had given up hope of ever seeing another sunrise. This joke over, the Jerries took them back to their rooms.

The next six British arrived on 7 November. Their journey from Laufen,
Oflag
VIIC, had lasted three days. The party of six consisted of Captains Rupert Barry of the 52nd Light Infantry, Kenneth Lockwood of the Queen's Royal Regiment, Harry Elliott of the Irish Guards, and Dick Howe MC of the Royal Tank Regiment, with 2nd Lieutenant “Peter” Allan of the Cameron Highlanders, and myself, a captain in the Royal Army Service Corps. We had all been recaptured after escaping via a tunnel at Laufen (described in my book
The Colditz Story
).

There was little or no chance of escape on the train journey. Moreover, we had no escape material or reserve food (except potatoes!). The guards were watchful; we were always accompanied to the lavatory. We travelled sometimes in second class, sometimes in third, at all hours of the day and night. There were many changes and long waits, usually in the military waiting-rooms of stations. Passers-by eyed us curiously but without great animosity. Those who made closer contact by speaking with our guards were concerned at our carrying potatoes with us. After three months of starvation diet, followed by many weeks of bread and water, we were taking no risks and would have fought for those cold scraggy balls of starch with desperation!