Visit the site of the most famous escape of World War II from a German prisoner-of-war camp that went down in history as “The Great Escape”. Join our tour exploring the fascinating history of brave Allied airmen who escaped from captivity in a German POW camp Stalag Luft 3. The American classic movie "The Great Escape" was based on those dramatic events.
Stalag Luft III in Sagan (now Żagań in western Poland) was a Luftwaffe run prisoner-of-war camp that held captured Allied airmen. In March 1943 they came up with a plan to prepare and undertake a mass escape of 200 prisoners through a tunnel. In a tiny compound 600 men worked for a year under the strictest secrecy on the tunnels named Tom, Dick, and Harry. They were hundreds of feet long, with underground railways, workshops, air pumping stations and deep enough to avoid German sound detectors. Under the very noses of alert guards the prisoners organized factories for making German uniforms, compasses, maps, documents and even a studio for fake passport photographs. Finally, on the night of 24th of March 1944, 76 prisoners managed to escape from the camp through the Harry tunnel but soon after 73 were recaptured during the chase. Outraged, Hitler ordered to shoot dead fifty of them which was an appalling abrogation of the Geneva Convention.
Find out more about those dramatic events at the Museum of Allied POW Camps in Żagań, visit the grounds of Stalag Luft III and the memorial to the brave airmen who paid the highest price for an escape they considered a soldier's duty.