COLDITZ: THE FULL STORY
P.R. Reid
New York: St. Martin's Press
352 pp., $18.95
Established in the late ninth century, the city of Colditz is located in present-day East Germany within the triangle formed by Leipzig, Erfurt, and Dresden. The word Colditz in Serbian means "dark forest," an appropriate description for the castle, dominating the small town, which was used during World War II as an "escape-proof" prison for a couple of thousand British, French, Polish, Belgian, American, Yugoslav, Norwegian, and Dutch prisoners of war. The prisoners were primarily officers, and they included a smattering of dignitaries whom the Germans were anxious to keep their hands on.
The history of Colditz Castle dates from 1080, when a Count Wiprecht von Groitsch began construction on a large rocky promontory overlooking the Mulde River. The castle became a focal point of the wars that periodically decimated eastern Germany, and was destroyed and rebuilt several times during the next six hundred years. During the fifteenth century it became the property of rulers of the German province of Saxony, and two hundred years later, during the Thirty Years War, it was occupied by troops of the Holy Roman Emperor and then by those of King Gustav Adolph of Sweden.
By the nineteenth century, the castle was used as a poorhouse, jail, and priory. In 1829, it was converted to an insane asylum and remained a mental institution until 1924. During World War I, the Germans turned it into a psychiatric ward and a tuberculosis sanatorium. It was not used as a prisoner-of-war camp during this war although the Germans, in order to discourage escape attempts during World War II, floated the rumor that the castle had housed prisoners of war during the previous war and had proven to be escape-proof. The German financial crisis of the 1920s forced the closing of the insane asylum in 1924, and the castle was empty for two years. In 1926 it became a temporary jail for those awaiting trial.
After Hitler came to power, the castle was used as a concentration camp (1933-35), particularly for communists, a camp for Nazi brownshirts (1937-38), and an insane asylum (1938-39). In 1939 the castle was taken over by the German army for a prisoner-of-war camp. It was given the title of Oflag IVC. ("Oflag" was an abbreviation of "Offizierlager," meaning "officers' place of detention" and the "IVC" designated the district in which Colditz was located). Oflag IVC was to be a special camp, known as Sonderlager, for prisoners who warranted special attention, such as officers, soldiers with a history of escape attempts, and relatives of important Allied political and military figures.
After the war, the East Germans placed a commemorative plaque at the castle. The plaque's words confirm George Orwell's famous description of the communist use of history: "THE CASTLE SERVED IN 1933-34 AS AN INTERNMENT CAMP. HERE STARTED FOR MANY INFLEXIBLE ANTIFASCISTS THE PAINFUL JOURNEY THROUGH THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS. THEY FOUGHT SO THAT WE MAY LIVE." This, of course, ignores the most important use of Colditz during Wrold War II: the housing of Allied officers. It also ignores the reason why the Colditz of World War II has continually fascinated aficionados of escape literature: as a demonstration of man's ingenuity to escape from
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