Colditz

1 » YESTERDAY’S SHADOWS

AUTUMN 1939

The story of Colditz Castle in the Second World War begins on the narrow peninsula of Hel. Hel is little more than a very long sandbank on the Baltic coast of the Polish Corridor, directly north of Gdynia.

The story also begins in the person of Lieutenant Jȩdrzej Giertych, a reserve officer of the Polish Navy – very tall, robust, with a strong, handsome face, brown hair, aged thirty-six, married with four small children.

The day was Thursday, 24 August 1939. Russia and Germany had signed a pact of friendship the day before. The pact could only mean one thing for Poland. She would be attacked very soon, by one or the other, or by both.

Jȩdrzej was roused from his bed at his home in Warsaw at 7 a.m. by a repeated ringing of the doorbell. A policeman was there. He saluted, handing Jȩdrzej a paper which stated that he was called up for service, that he was to arrange his private affairs in the next two hours, then to proceed by all speed to the railway station, take the train for Gdynia and report to the naval dockyard at Oksywie. He arrived that evening.

Jȩdrzej did not see his wife or children again for six years. The youngest child was only two months old.

He was marooned at naval headquarters for two days before being assigned a post. In the meantime, on the Polish political front, general mobilization was delayed at the request of the Western Allies ‘so as not to increase international tension’. The blindness, culpable and cowardly, of those Allies today seems incredible. When mobilization came it was already too late. Hitler had seized the initiative.

Jȩdrzej was assigned to the Detachment of Fishing Cutters, centred round the commandeered local tourist passenger ship called Gdynia, acting as a ‘mother’ ship. The captain was Lieutenant Commander Yougan. Together they hoisted the flag of the Polish Fighting Navy on the Gdynia. Jȩdrzej was allotted a cabin. He unpacked his portmanteau, taking from it first of all a framed picture, blessed in church, of Our Lady of Swarzewo. Swarzewo is a coastal village containing a shrine dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, which is venerated by the Polish fishermen of the Baltic Sea.

The cutters arrived on Thursday, 31 August, with their owners and crews, the fishermen, in twos and threes and in larger clutches. They mustered soon between seventy to eighty and were immediately divided into groups of six boats. Jȩdrzej became the proud commander of such a group. On the next day each existing cutter crew would be augmented by two or three army reservists. He would be the officer in charge of about thirty-five men. That night he went to his bunk very late. There had been much to do.

At 4 a.m. he was awakened by the sound of planes overhead, followed at once by the scream of dive-bombers. German stukas, in number, were bombing the naval installations all around him. This was the opening bombardment of the Second World War.

The Gdynia was anchored in the naval harbour. The early morning aerial bombardment continued at intervals. Naval shells began to fall on the city. Jȩdrzej went ashore and managed to collect his reservists – eighty of them – from the naval barracks. These were transported to the Gdynia temporarily before being allocated to their cutters. At this point, at about 2 p.m., the Gdynia received orders to move out of port into the Bay of Puck. The naval airport at Puck had been one of the main targets of the morning aerial bombardment.

He studied the coastal marine charts on the bridge. The town of Puck was at the head of the bay, where, from the mainland, the peninsula of Hel formed a hook, turning sharply from north to south-east, continuing almost in a straight line like a needle, at some points only 200 metres wide. Along this needle lay three fishing villages, Chatupy, Kuznica and Jastarnia, the last with a little harbour, facing south-west into the bay and out towards the mainland.

Jȩdrzej, in the last cutter, followed the Gdynia and the lines of little ships out of the port. In the afternoon the aerial bombardment of Gdynia grew to massive proportions. The whole skyline darkened to a livid mauve as Jȩdrzej watched, and the thunder of explosions vibrated in the marrow of his spine. Black erupting clouds split open with the lightning strokes of detonation. Whirlwinds twisted the fountains of building ash into gaping red mouths, spewing rubble and debris, the vomit of destruction. The devastation inflicted by Hitler’s onslaught was spread over many Polish cities and military targets on that first day of the war.

The Gdynia was now anchored in shallow water in the bay, about nine miles from the city whose name she bore. Jȩdrzej reported on board. The eighty reservists were to stay on the ship that night, along with the civilian ship’s crew. The ship’s total crew would be 120.

Dusk had fallen when Lieutenant Commander Yougan ordered Jȩdrzej to lead a convoy of the cutters to the shallows around Jastarnia, which was about three miles distant, to disperse and anchor them amongst the sandbanks, and take himself and the fishermen crews off to rest in the port and village for the night. This task completed late into the night, Jȩdrzej wrapped his overcoat around him, lay down on the cobbles of the jetty and, with his head leaning against a bollard, went sound asleep.

He was awakened, once again, by the sound of planes. They were soon overhead – large formations of heavy bombers and dive-bombers from the direction of Königsberg, heading for the Polish mainland. Out of one formation, suddenly, a group of planes divided. Stukas again. One after the other they turned, seemed to drop – then with accelerating, calculated fury, they descended on the Gdynia. The ship seemed to break up like matchwood – into several pieces. She sank within ten minutes. Men were hurled into the sea in large numbers. Then the stukas came again. They machine-gunned the men in the water and dropped anti-personnel bombs as they dived. Some managed, though wounded, to reach the shore, only to die later. Some were dragged from the water by helpers from the land. They also died later. Yougan survived, because he too had been called ashore.

The ship’s secret instruction papers went down with the Gdynia. Jȩdrzej does not know to this day what purpose the ‘Cutter Detachment’ was scheduled to fulfil. His holy picture of the Virgin of Swarzewo went down with all his other belongings, save a briefcase that he had taken ashore with him.

On Sunday, 3 September, the Detachment was disbanded and the survivors were transformed into a ‘Yougan Company’ of naval marines, soon reinforced by crews of other sunken ships.

Over the radio they heard of the declaration of war by Great Britain and France.

The village of Hel at the head of the peninsula had contained a mainly German population up to 1914; though originally Dutch, they had become German. Between the wars the population became predominantly Polish, and the village grew and became a naval establishment with a naval basin and a commercial port. Polish submarines, as well as surface craft, were based on Hel. It was well defended with artillery, naval guns and anti-aircraft guns.

The peninsula was now invested by the Germans. A German land force advanced from Puck but was halted at the narrowest part between Chalupy and Kuznica, where the front could only take one company of men at a time, facing an enemy company.

Hel, with a garrison of some 3,000 men, was subjected to a most devastating attack. The two German battleships, Schleswig-Holstein and Schliesen, bombarded systematically and incessantly. German aerial bombardment, too, was without respite. The next danger for the defenders was a German landing. Jȩdrzej was incorporated into a company, which was given the task of organizing the defence against such a danger. They fortified the beach at the most likely place, near Jastarnia, where there was a good depth of water close inshore.

The German land force advanced slowly. The Schleswig-Holstein and the destroyer Leberecht Maas were damaged by Polish artillery, and a German minesweeper was sunk. The German landing did not materialize. But the pressure never relaxed.

A month after the commencement of hostilities, the peninsula of Hel remained the last remnant of Poland’s territory still unconquered; Rear Admiral Unrug was its commander. In the early hours of 2 October, with his artillery silenced for lack of ammunition, he decided to surrender in order to avoid civilian losses in the peninsula’s fishing villages, which the Germans were about to storm. The whole of Poland was already in German or Soviet hands, with the exception of a Polish Army composed of several battered, numerically reduced divisions still on the move in the neighbourhood of Lublin. This Army fought, on 6 October, a last battle against the combined Germans and Russians near the small town of Kock. It was destroyed in this battle, except for a detachment of cavalry under the command of Major Hubal, which survived in the Polish forests until the spring of 1940, when it was destroyed by the Germans and its commander killed.

The decision to surrender the peninsula of Hel was, for Unrug, a painful one; but the continuation of resistance by this isolated redoubt no longer served a useful purpose. Jȩdrzej, learning of the impending surrender, asked and was granted leave to escape. Five officers and men joined him; a stout rowing boat was purchased, and at nightfall it was launched into heavy seas off the beach at Jastarnia. Men waded breast-high in the surf to help it over the breakers. They rowed a long way into the night in the direction of Sweden. High seas breaking over sandbanks in shallow waters were their undoing. The boat was overturned by a freak wave. They all swam for their lives, reaching the main shore safely.

The next morning Jȩdrzej went to the seashore to see if anything had been washed up. They had loaded the boat with heavily packed suitcases. He had only taken his briefcase. It was the only thing washed up.

Jȩdrzej reports that some men succeeded in reaching Sweden in motor launches from Hel. He declined a generous offer of concealment by a local fisherman, and eventually went into captivity, a prisoner of war.

First of all, he was incarcerated in the Oflag at Nienburg near Bremen. At the beginning of November 1939 he was moved by train to an unknown destination, and in the middle of the night he, with others, was able to escape from the train. He travelled by another train to Berlin, was arrested there, and spent two weeks in the central Gestapo prison at Alexandraplatz. His briefcase was now in the Gestapo’s possession. Later in November, he was handed over to the military authorities. They had the courtesy to inform him that he would shortly be incarcerated in a prison called Oflag IVC, situated in a town called Colditz.

*

On 31 October 1938, the German Oberkommando der Wehrmacht – which can be translated as the Overall Command of the Defence Power of Germany – had commandeered Colditz Castle. It was given the military title of Oflag IVC. Oflag is an abbreviation of Offizierlager meaning ‘Officers’ place of detention’. The Roman numerals and the letters denoted districts.

The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) had laid plans, in advance of 1939, for a special camp, known as a Sonderlager, for enemy officers, prisoners of war, who for some reason merited strict treatment and a more careful watch than was kept on others. Among them were to be those who escaped but were recaught and suspected of intending to escape again.

Colditz Castle was designated to be this camp.

At first, however, as no ‘special’ prisoners were yet picked out, the German military authorities did not consider it wise to keep such an expensive establishment empty and began to use it as a transit camp for Polish officers.

Jȩdrzej Giertych was escorted to Colditz in November 1939. A German cavalry captain (Rittmeister), accompanied by a dozen soldiers, awaited him at the station. He told Jȩdrzej that Colditz was a place from which it was not possible to escape: ‘Do not try to escape from here; Sie beissen hier auf Granit [here you will bite into granite].’ He was led to the Castle in a curious way: all the soldiers had bayonets on their rifles, which they pointed into him. He walked in the middle of the street and the soldiers marched awkwardly, their rifles forming a star around him. Two sergeants marched beside the soldiers on the roadway. The captain walked on the pavement. This strange procession attracted the attention of passers-by, who stopped and gaped. An elderly man looked out at him from a window, laughed and pointed with his finger to his forehead. He thought the spectacle crazy.

When Jȩdrzej entered the Castle, he was immediately locked in a ‘solitary’ cell near the gate. (Later this cell was abolished, but a whole corridor of cells was built nearby.) He spent two weeks there, in bad conditions, in great cold, on a bed of boards with a couple of blankets but without even a straw mattress. For furniture there was a stool, a washing bowl and a stove with a basket of coal. He was not allowed matches. The stove always went out at night. He saw, through a little window, that the camp was full of Polish officers, several hundreds of them. He had no contact with them. Food was brought to him by a Polish orderly under guard from the main prison kitchen. He was not allowed to talk to him. Sometimes he received notes hidden in the food. In one of these he was asked if it were true that he murdered a German when escaping from a prison camp, and had been condemned to death and was awaiting execution. For the first week he was really completely alone. Food and washing water were brought to him in silence. Removal of the toilet bucket was done in silence. Dirty water was poured through a hole in the ground.

During the second week, a Lieutenant Priem became a regular visitor to his cell. He sat on the stool and conducted long conversations with Jȩdrzej, who sat on the edge of his bed. He said that Jȩdrzej was, in reality, the first inmate of Colditz Castle as it was designated to be – a Sonderlager or special camp. All the prisoners of war milling around in the courtyard were in temporary occupation. Priem visited sometimes two or three times a day. He would not discuss the situation on the war fronts, nor did he allow the prisoner any newspapers. But history, yes – he would discuss European history at length, candidly, without prejudice; and he was unearthing the history of Colditz and its Castle.

So Jȩdrzej learnt that about the middle of the sixth century the region was invaded by Slavs, the Sorben tribe, who came from Serbia, Dalmatia and Croatia. The Sorben were good farmers. They gave the region a new look: cut-down forests, dried-up marshes and built villages. The Serbian influence was evident in the names of the villages all ending in ‘tz’ – Podelwitz, Meuselwitz, Raschitz, Zollwitz, Terpitzsch, Zeitlitz, Colditz (early spelling Kosldyeze). Colditz in Serbian means ‘Dark Forest’.

Colditz town probably began to be built in the year 892 by a Christian settlement. In 928 the German King Henry I won the battle of Gana, beating the Dalemincier (Dalmatians), a sub-tribe or sect of the Sorben, and the whole area became a German province. Eventually the town came under the rule of Count Wiprecht von Groitsch, who in 1080 began the building of a castle on a great rock promontory overlooking the River Mulde.

On one occasion Priem recounted the story of the first Colditz escaper. He said that in 1294, the Castle of Colditz was a garrison for the troops of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Adolph, Count of Nassau. In that year, war broke out between the emperor and the two sons of the Margrave of Meissen, Albert II. Albert’s wife Margaretha had been given the Castle as her dowry in 1257; her two sons (whose names were Frederick and Dietzmann) were almost certainly born there, and probably lived in the Castle from birth. Although the Castle returned to the possession of the then emperor, Rudolph, in 1282, the two boys remained there, holding it with their troops until March 1289 when, presumably under duress, they relinquished it to Rudolph at Erfurt. But in 1294 they were at war with the new emperor, Adolph. In due course they forcibly took possession of the towns surrounding Colditz, such as Rochlitz, Grimma, Leisnig and Borna. The Castle and its garrison, however, remained true to the emperor, resisted attack and became a rallying point and refuge for his supporters.

Count Philip of Nassau, a nephew of the emperor, was defeated in a battle at Luckau in 1294. He was captured in flight, sent first to Leipzig, then imprisoned in Rochlitz. One night, due to the laxity of the guards, he was able to escape. He made his way successfully to Colditz Castle, some fifteen miles away, where he was welcomed with open arms by the defenders.

‘Count Philip was therefore,’ Priem said, ‘the first historically recorded escaper of Colditz; albeit that he escaped into Colditz rather than out of it! This kind of escape,’ he added wryly, ‘is the only kind that will be permitted during the present hostilities!’

During the fifteenth century the town and Castle became the property of the electors of Saxony. In 1430 the Castle was fired by Hussites and razed to the ground. It was rebuilt many years later, in the form of forward and rear castles, each consisting of several buildings. Priem discovered there had been another great fire in 1504 – only a few buildings of the front castle survived. The town likewise was almost destroyed. Rebuilding began in 1506.

Electors ruled in succession until the inheritance passed in 1553 to Duke August. August was especially attracted by the position of the Castle and the hunting grounds around; he showed a marked preference for Colditz and continued the beautifying of it in 1554. His wife was a Danish princess, and their coat of arms remains today over the main gateway. Also in this year (1554) the laying-out of the park began, the elector encircling an area with planks between the Castle and Hainberg. Colditz Castle now became a favoured residence of the Saxon princes, and was occupied for much of the year by the princes and others of noble rank.

In 1586, Christian I, August’s son, who was also fond of Colditz Castle, built a pleasure garden with pavilions. In 1589 a wall was begun around the park beneath the Castle, but in 1590 and 1591, by buying several properties in Zschadrass, Zollwitz, Terpitzsch and Colditz, the area was increased to 125 acres and became known as the Tiergarten (zoological gardens). A wall was built all around it, which exists to this day.

In 1591, Christian I, now the Elector, came to Colditz for the last time. He became ill on a stag hunt near Ebersback, was brought back to the Castle, and from there to Dresden, where he died. In 1603 his widow, the Duchess Sophie of Brandenburg, together with the court and government officials, moved into the Castle and remained there until 1622.

Plague devastated Colditz at times over two centuries. In 1521 there were more than 800 deaths; in 1607–8, 428 people died; in 1637 there were 350 victims and in 1680, it claimed the lives of 125 citizens.

Jȩdrzej, though closely confined, had seen enough of the Castle to appreciate its points as a fortress. Most fortresses had secret passages, escape routes out of the Castle for use during sieges. He questioned Priem: ‘What sieges has this Castle undergone?’ Priem came back with the surprising answer that from the end of the Thirty Years War (when it was occupied successively by troops of the emperor and of King Gustav Adolf of Sweden) in 1648, and more particularly since 1694, the Castle had seen little fighting and no sieges. ‘It became’, he explained, ‘the home of retirement for royal widows and dowagers. It was not even fortified, relying simply on its massive gates to keep unwelcome intruders out.’

‘But surely’, argued Jȩdrzej, ‘its strategic position commanding the river and the bridge at Colditz would have made it a natural strongpoint to guard and hold?’

‘No,’ said Priem. ‘Duke Friedrich August (“the Strong”), who was Elector from 1694 to 1733, built many other castles for the defence of Saxony, and so reduced the strategic importance of Colditz.’

‘So the Castle, being undefended and peaceable, never had to withstand sieges or bombardments?’

‘Indeed,’ Priem said. ‘Invading armies would know it was occupied or owned by dowagers and pass by.’

But Priem had overlooked a point which became apparent as the nineteenth century unfolded.

In 1800 the Castle became a poorhouse for the Leipzig district, with part of it set aside for use as a priory, and still, throughout the ensuing Napoleonic era, it remained aloof from the military activity taking place all around. Colditz was right in the path of advancing and retreating armies, and with remorseless regularity the town found itself supporting billeted troops. From time to time it even became a battlefield itself, as in March 1813 when French soldiers seized the bridge over the Mulde. In May of that year, after its defeat at Lutzen, the whole Prussian Army retreated through Colditz, Marshal Blücher setting up a temporary headquarters in the marketplace. The pursuing French troops were headed by Napoleon himself, and a few days later, after the Prussians had pulled out, he in turn stayed in the town, in Nicolaigate.

From the end of the Thirty Years War until the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the town of Colditz paid the price of its position on a strategic high road, suffering poverty, starvation, pillage, press gangs, rape and disease. It is ironic that the Castle, intact and unblemished throughout those years, had been built by Count Wiprecht ‘in order to protect the town’.

In 1829 Colditz Castle was converted to an asylum and the criminals were moved to a prison in Zwickau. Until 1924 the Castle remained a mental, insane and psychiatric institution – a sanctuary for the most unfortunate of people. It also became the home of a family for several generations.

How this ambivalent role came about is revealed by the following extract from the memoirs of Mrs Elizabeth (Elsa) Schunemann Boveroux of San Francisco.

My great grandfather Voppel was a member of the household of the King of Saxony. He expected his son to follow in his military career, but Grandpappa had other ideas. He wanted to study medicine, be a doctor, being especially interested in the mentally sick, who were confined and often kept in chains. His idea was to give them freedom to develop and gain confidence, directing them to follow their individual trends, and allowing them to work and play in the open. The King became interested and furthered these ideals. Eventually Grandpappa studied and finally graduated from the University of Jena.

So Colditz Castle became an asylum. At the time Dr Voppel was probably about twenty-nine. He was married in the Castle chapel and his twelve children were christened there, including Mrs Elizabeth Schunemann Boveroux’s mother, and later were confirmed there in the Lutheran faith. There too Elizabeth’s mother was married and Elizabeth herself christened.

Dr Voppel had his offices on the ground floor in the old Castle (POW section), and there was a life-sized oil painting of him in his office which disappeared in Hitler’s day. His private apartments were on the first floor – drawing room and living rooms – reached by a circular stone staircase. These rooms were occupied by the British POW contingent in the Second World War from November 1940. Elizabeth often played there and Grandma’s work table and comfortable chair stood in the deep, raised alcove of a window in her living room, overlooking the park (Tiergarten).

In those days there was usually a family gathering after the noonday nap, in the courtyard if the weather was pleasant, in a secluded section to the left of the private entrance. A vivid description of her grandmother and daily life in the Castle at that time, written by Elizabeth, is given in her private memoirs.

Elizabeth’s mother, Margret Voppel, went to school in Dresden, where she was taught to play the piano by Clara Schumann, wife of the composer. Her father, Max Schunemann, the youngest son of a wealthy Hamburg shipping merchant, voyaged as far as San Francisco at the age of nineteen, fell in love with the place and became an American citizen. Max returned to Germany to visit his father, who by then had retired to a villa beneath the walls of Colditz, and there he met Margret at a social gathering in the Castle. They were married in the chapel in 1873. Elizabeth says that the wedding festivities were gay and memorable – over 300 guests were entertained.

Elizabeth spent her first five years in the Castle. In March 1879 she and her mother left Colditz to voyage across the Atlantic from Le Havre (Hamburg and Bremen were closed because of the plague), then across America by the Union (Western) Pacific railroad, which brought them to San Francisco. Max, who had travelled ahead of them, was waiting to greet them at the Oakland Mole; he had disliked Bismarck’s regime in Germany and had decided to emigrate for good.

This unusual interlude of domesticity, combined with the fulfilment of that laudable human and Christian motivation – love of one’s neighbours – which was manifest in the care of the mentally sick, lasted for more than fifty years. For Jȩdrzej, the philosopher and historian, it contained a lesson of hope which did not fail to support him in those first black days and nights in his solitary cell. Castles are linked historically in the mind with war, siege, imprisonment and cruelty. Here was an exception. Castles, after all, are mute accomplices. Man can make good use of his accomplice as well as bad.

There is no evidence that Colditz Castle became a prisoner-of-war camp in the 1914–18 war, although the rumour was put about in 1940, probably by the German command, that it had been so used and had been found to be escape-proof. Indeed there were large numbers of psychiatric patients in the Castle during the First World War, of whom 912 are recorded as having died of malnutrition. Three wards were converted to a tuberculosis sanatorium, only to revert to psychiatric wards after the war. After the disastrous German inflation (1922–3), shortage of funds forced the closure of the asylum in 1924. For two years the Castle stood empty; then in 1926 it became a remand home.

For the history of the period 1921–38 one has to rely on a book published by the communist-controlled Colditz town council in 1965. (Colditz became part of the DDR after the war.) From this we learn that as soon as Hitler came to power in 1933, the Castle was turned into a Nazi concentration camp, where members of the Communist party were incarcerated, ostensibly in ‘protective custody’. By May there were already 600 prisoners, many of whom were tortured. From 1935 to 1937 the Castle was a camp for Nazi brownshirts, and in 1938 it became an asylum once more.

Jȩdrzej was curious about the cell in which he found himself, but Priem closed up like a clam whenever he broached the subject of the immediate pre-war incumbents of the cell. Eventually, through the Polish orderly and a few more surreptitious notes, he discovered to his severe discomfiture that he was almost certainly in a condemned cell where previous prisoners had been held before being tortured.

*

Paul Priem was born in about 1893 in the region of Bromberg-Schneidemühl, which is now part of Poland but was then part of the German Reich of Kaiser Wilhelm II. It carried a mixed population of Germans and Poles. He had fought right through the First World War, and afterwards he had continued to fight as a volunteer in the Grenzschutz (frontier guards) to keep his home territory part of Germany instead of being incorporated in the new Poland. A Polish insurrection started on 27 December 1918 in Pznania, or Provinz Posen as it was called by the Prussians, to whom it had belonged from the end of the Napoleonic Wars until December 1918. The Polish insurgents seized power in almost the whole of the province, fighting victoriously against a powerful German Army and its Grenzschutz, in which Priem served. The victorious Poles were confirmed in their victory and were treated as part of the Western Allies when Marshal Foch negotiated at Trier on 16 February 1919 the renewal (with new terms) of the 11 November Armistice.

Priem was the son of a German schoolteacher, and was himself a schoolteacher, in fact a headmaster, from Briesen, a town in this disputed territory. It was therefore little wonder that he was a belligerent (though never fanatical) supporter of Hitler, who had won back this land for Germany in 1939. Jȩdrzej found that despite this background, Priem felt no dislike for the Poles. In fact, he showed a grudging respect and sympathy for them.

Jȩdrzej asked permission of Priem to go to Mass in the chapel with the other Polish prisoners. This was refused at first, but then the order was reversed. On the next Sunday, when all the other prisoners were inside the chapel, he was conducted by Priem through the empty courtyard – empty save for one Polish officer, whom Jȩdrzej recognized. He was a very left-wing socialist, in fact, a communist, also an atheist: a member of the City Council of Warsaw, of which Jȩdrzej was also a member. They exchanged salutes in silence. The atheist was embarrassed.

What an arresting momentary picture of allegory and symbolism that untoward meeting evokes! The cobbled courtyard, the high grey walls – punctuated with barred windows – mounting to the sky; the muted sound of the chapel organ, and men’s voices intoning the opening ‘Introibo ad altare dti . . .’; the two men, brought together by the bonds of prison, confront each other. The loyal Polish Christian patriot and the communist pro-Russian, atheistic Pole stand with the German victor between them, click their heels and salute. . . . Jȩdrzej was escorted up to the balcony of the Chapel, where he remained alone, save for his escort Priem, throughout the service.

One evening, just as Jȩdrzej was wrapping his blankets around him on the hard board bed, Priem came to him: ‘Get up and dress. You are leaving Colditz in ten minutes.’

A car was waiting. Priem and two sergeants composed the escort. They set off for a railway station some distance from Colditz; thence took a train to Leipzig, and then to Munich, travelling all night. On this long journey they had a compartment to themselves. Priem became very much at ease, and talked freely of the political situation without rancour. He gave Jȩdrzej a copy of the newspaper the Völkischer Beobachter. He recounted the story of the sinking of the great Polish liner the Pilsudski in the North Sea, and expressed his regret, asking Jȩdrzej if he had known anyone on it.

‘Yes,’ Jȩdrzej said, ‘I knew the captain.’

‘I am so very sorry,’ Priem said. ‘He went down with his ship – a true sailor.’

Russia and Finland were at war, Jȩdrzej learnt. The Finns were giving the Russians a good thrashing, which pleased Jȩdrzej enormously. Priem noticed this. ‘We can share our feelings on this subject,’ he said. ‘This will make it easier for us to deal with Russia in due course.’

Jȩdrzej did not react.

From Munich, where they changed trains in the morning, they travelled on to Murnau in the Bavarian Alps. There, it transpired, was a large Oflag for Polish officers. Again, Jȩdrzej was at once placed in solitary confinement. There he spent a month.

Priem, besides being friendly, had expressed condolences in a roundabout way for Jȩdrzej’s situation: being a prisoner – in solitary confinement – having lost the war – and having lost his country – his independence gone. At this stage, Jȩdrzej had brought him up sharply: ‘The war is not finished. Neither is Poland lost. It will be restored. The war will be won by the Allies – including Poland.’

Priem had not pressed the point again, respecting his views. So they never quarrelled.

For far too long the Allies had prevaricated, hoping that the bogeyman would just go away. Only at this point, with the Polish nation subjugated, with men like Jȩdrzej enduring the devastation of their country, did the Western leaders begin to face the harsh reality of war, forced before their reluctant gaze.