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Nazi Prison Escape

Hole and rope
Hole and bedsheet rope beneath the theater's stage.
Escaping Colditz
14: January 6, 1942

On this night, four officers, operating in pairs, slipped through a specially cut hole in the British theater floor, dropped into a unoccupied room, and walked out into a corridor that led over the main gate of the prisoners' yard and into an attic over the German guardroom. Dressed as German officers, first one pair and then the other descended into and walked out of the temporarily unoccupied guardroom, strolled under the archway into the German courtyard, and exited the main gate. Fearful of being stopped at the final gate beyond the moat, they turned east out of the main gate and, under cover of darkness, clambered over the unguarded wall along the park road. Though the Germans captured one pair, they did not get the other: Dutch Lieut. Tony Luteyn reached Switzerland with his partner, English Lieut. Airey Neave, the first Brit to flee successfully.

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  1. First escape
    April 12, 1941


  2. Straw mattresses
    May 8, 1941


  3. Locked cells
    Mid-May 1941


  4. Canteen tunnel
    May 1941


  5. German woman
    June 1941


  6. Air-raid shelter
    June 1941


  7. Hacksaw
    June 1941


  8. Over the wall
    July 2, 1941


  9. Air shaft
    July 28, 1941


  1. Lavatory
    July 31, 1941


  2. Manhole
    Late summer, 1941


  3. Dummies
    December 1941


  4. German officers
    December 1941


  5. Main gate
    January 6, 1942


  6. Town dump
    March 1942


  7. Wooden crate
    September 7, 1942


  8. Mussolini's office
    September 9, 1942


  9. Headquarters building
    October 15, 1942


  1. Willi the electrician
    December 1942


  2. "Maddest attempt"
    May 11, 1943


  3. Franz Josef
    September 2, 1943


  4. Cellar house
    January 19, 1944


  5. Rubbish heap
    May 2, 1944


  6. Greatest escaper
    September 25, 1944


  7. Glider
    April 1945



Escaping Colditz | The Jailor's Story | Great Escapes | The Colditz Glider
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