Seventy years ago, during the night of 24-25 March 1944, one of the most daring escapes in history took place.
Commonwealth flight crew in Stalag Luft III, a Luftwaffe prisoner of war camp near Sagan in the German province of Lower Silesia, (now Zagan, Poland) had been digging escape tunnels and planning for a mass escape for almost two years.
With incredible ingenuity, over a period of several months, led by Canadian tunnel diggers, Canadian document forgers, Canadian scroungers, some 76 prisoners made a break in that cold March night.
There was an understood awareness that most would be captured and the purpose was as much to simply disrupt and occupy vast numbers of German forces as it was to actually make it back to England.
The first objective was successful with thousands of military personnel hunting down the escapees, and while three PW’s made it back to England, 50 of the recaptured escapees were later assassinated in cold blood.
The 1963 Hollywood film starring American actors, did portray the escape relatively well, except for the major flaw which angered many Canadian veterans, there were no Americans involved.
Author TED BARRIS interview= The Great Escape:A Canadian Story
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