The below text is the translation of the article by Czesław Sobecki, published in Gazeta Pomorska in January 1970. The article initiates a series of texts describing the interactions of residents of Szubin with the allied POWs of Oflag XXIB.
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... just behind the fence, there was a series of three-meter high poles, to which a dozen or so coils of barbed wire were fastened around the main buildings of the Reform School. Directly behind this square-shaped fence was the second one, and German guards were marching back and forth along the fence. With a view of this impassable barrier, involuntarily the thought of escape was associated. I realized at once that it would be an impossibility – writes in his diary Jan Jankowski, a former prisoner of the Nazis, who was interned in Szubin. The camp was located in the buildings of the Provincial Education Center. Its first prisoners were Poles, many of whom supposed never to return to their families. The camp was liquidated in the middle of the January 1940 year. The first period of unbridled Nazi terror ended. Poles breathed a sigh of relief. The buildings of the former Provincial Educational Center were deserted.
Not for long. With the start of the campaign in the West, the Nazis organized here Oflag XXIB, a prisoner-of-war camp for officers. The first transports of French and English prisoners were directed to Szubin in the summer. It was a shocking sight. The gaunt, unshaven officers of the Allied army were dying of exhaustion extending pleadingly their hands for bread. Pulled out by the Nazis from their homes Poles looked with strangled hearts on long columns marching of those who were supposed to bring them freedom. – Pain! Bread! – the officers were begging. Despite the watchful eyes of a strong escort and local Volksdeutsches, some Poles ran home for food for hungry allies.
Since the appearance of the French and English prisoners, sincere friendship and cooperation between them and the Polish population have been struck up. Thanks to the help of Poles, there were several escapes from Oflag XXIB. The most famous took place in March 1943.
At the beginning of December 1969, on the pages of our newspaper, a short mention about the revealing of the 40-meter tunnel has appeared, which in secret from the Nazis was dug at the turn of 1942 and 1943 by the prisoners of Oflag XXIB in Szubin. The traces of this unusual escape tunnel were found during the expansion of the Provincial Youth Education Center. The fact that the tunnel was perfectly masked is evidenced by the fact that it was discovered only after more than 26 years! ...
Alfons Jachalski and Zenon Erdmann talking about their cooperation with the POWs of the Szubin POW camp.
Fragments of this tunnel were shown to us by the head of the Reform School, Alfons Jachalski, and the scoutmaster Zenon Erdmann, lover of the history of Szubin. Both as Polish workers were employed during the occupation in Oflag XXIB, constantly developed by the Nazis. They told us about their contacts with prisoners of war and about the assistance given to them by Szubin residents in organizing the escape.
According to my chatters, there were between 2-5 thousand prisoners of various nations the Szubin camp. Initially, there were French, then English, Yugoslavians, and Americans. In the final phase of the war, Soviet prisoners were also in the camp.
How did the prisoners' contacts with Poles come about?
One of them named Josef Bryks was Czech and he spoke Polish perfectly. From his stories, Poles learned that in 1938 he escaped by plane from Czechoslovakia to France or England and took part in the Campaign of 1940. Shot down over France reportedly escaped from captivity, he joined RAF in the rank of major, and again fought against the Germans. Shot down for the second time in 1942 over the Third Reich, he was taken to the POW camp in Szubin. The swaggering nature and willingness to fight against the Nazis did not allow him to sit behind the wires idly. Together with other prisoners from his barrack, he started to prepare to escape.
Major Józef Bryks was an experienced conspirator. He wanted that in case of fail Nazi repressions cover the smallest number of people. Hence, the individual workers helping the prisoners did not know about each other. Therefore, each of them now knows only a piece of the story of the famous escape of the March 1943. It is hard to knock together from these scraps of memories from almost 27 years ago a complete and consistent story. Therefore, our account will be incomplete and will certainly contain a lot of gaps and understatements. We want to ask for completion of this story those readers who lived in Szubin during the occupation and have had contacts with the prisoners of war of Oflag XXIB.
Let's return to our first chatters: Alfons Jachalski and Zenon Erdmann. The first of them remembered that the tunnel Bryks and his colleagues planned to escape through began to be built in the winter of 1942. The ground was frozen and there was a low risk of collapse. The tunnel was drilled down three meters underground. Nobody was carrying out its measurements, but from the visual inspection we had carried out, the adult man - crawling - could get out through it. The escapees had taken care about getting fresh air into the underground corridor, installing aeration system made of tin cans. The walls of the tunnel were shored up with logs (boards), which were disappearing from the fire on which the tar was boiled by Zenon Erdmann and his brothers. The sand excavated from the tunnel was partially stored in the latrine building (where was an entrance to the tunnel) and carried away in the pocket of coats and uniforms, and when there was no snow it was secretly dispersed around the camp. The exit from the tunnel was just near the nearby forest, from which it was easier to continue the escape.
CZ. SOBECKI
Copyright © for the Polish translation by Mariusz Winiecki
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