Colditz / Stalag Luft III

Colditz Castle, near Dresden in Germany, was home to Allied POWs during WWII. The officers who were sent to this high security camp were deemed to be dangerous or at risk of attempting to escape, as they had done from the previous camps from which they were transferred. But for a prison which was considered by the Germans to be escape-proof there were quite a high number of escapees. One of the camps most famous inmates was RAF hero Douglas Bader, who was incarcerated there after being shot down and attempting to escape from various other camps, despite having no legs.

The POW camp Stalag Luft III was located in Lower Silesia, which was at the time a German Province, but today is part of Poland, near the town of Żagań. It was the scene of the most daring escape attempted by POWs during WWII, on which the 1963 film starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough was based. Of the 200 Allied officers involved only three managed to escape. Of the 73 who actually made it out of the camp, 50 were executed.