Note: In this lengthy post, I bring together two of my passions, archaeology and forensic genealogy, to examine my father’s first cousin’s escape from a German stalag in October 1943. A recent visit to see the ongoing archaeological work at the former British lager where he was interned, located in Łambinowice, Poland, allowed me to stand atop the escape tunnel through which he escaped. This gave me another opportunity to time travel.
Related Posts:
POST 16: TRACKING MY GREAT-AUNT HEDWIG LÖWENSTEIN, NÉE BRUCK, & HER FAMILY THROUGH FIVE COUNTRIES
POST 137: MY FATHER’S FIRST COUSIN HEINZ LÖWENSTEIN: DISCOVERING HIS WHEREABOUTS DURING WORLD WAR II
POST 163: THE WARTIME ESCAPADES OF HEINZ LÖWENSTEIN, FEDOR LÖWENSTEIN’S BROTHER
POST 181: JOE POWELL, ESCAPEE FROM A GERMAN STALAG WITH MY FATHER’S FIRST COUSIN HEINZ LÖWENSTEIN
This post brings together two of my passions, archaeology and forensic genealogy. While my professional work as an archaeologist was primarily administrative, the skills I learned as a field archaeologist have come in very handy in doing forensic genealogy. It’s simply a different type of “digging.”
Let me explain the genesis of this post and in the process reintroduce my English friend, Brian Cooper (Figure 1), who has been instrumental in my learning as much as I have about one of my father’s first cousins, Heinz Löwenstein (1905-1979). (Figure 2) What has always drawn me to Heinz’s story was that I met him as a child. His wartime exploits were alluded to in tantalizingly vague enough ways they conjured childlike fantasies that he helped Jewish internees escape from detention camps. As implausible as this seems in retrospect, his actual Houdini-like escapades are nonetheless movie-worthy.
Heinz has been the subject of multiple earlier posts, as has his older brother Fedor Löwenstein (1901-1946). (Figure 3) To quickly remind readers about Fedor, he was an accomplished artist whose works were deemed by the Nazis to be “degenerate art,” meaning they destroyed many of them. I most recently wrote about Fedor Löwenstein in Post 189. In that publication, I detailed the culmination of an eleven-year struggle involving the French Ministry of Culture to retrieve three of his surviving paintings confiscated by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux in December 1940. For years the artworks were warehoused and languished in the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, unrecognized as looted art until 2010.
Back to Heinz Löwenstein. I invite readers to peruse or reread earlier posts for the background about him, specifically, Post 137, Post 137, Postscript, Post 163, Post 163, Postscript, and Post 181. However, let me briefly review Heinz’s wartime experiences and incarceration including how Brian and I first became acquainted.
Brian Cooper specializes in the study of British and Commonwealth World War II prisoners of war. For many years, Brian has been researching the fate of his uncle, Harold William Jackson from the 2nd Battalion Northamptonshire Regiment, who was taken prisoner in 1940 in France. (Figure 4) Following his capture, his uncle was interned in Stalag VIIIB, later renumbered Stalag 344, in Lamsdorf, Silesia, then part of Germany (today: Łambinowice, Poland). Brian’s uncle’s fate is unknown though it seems unlikely he died in Lamsdorf or attempting to escape from there. What appears more probable is that he died during the latter stages of the Second World War when the Nazis began marching still able-bodied prisoners of war westward as the Red Army was on the verge of liberating Lamsdorf in January 1945. Brian remains hopeful that a fellow inmate may have recorded in his postwar memoirs his uncle’s death as prisoners were being force marched, a hope that remains unfulfilled.
Brian first emailed me in February 2023. At the time, he intriguingly mentioned he’d come across a prisoner named “Heinz Loewenstein” (spelled “oe” without an umlaugh over the “o”) in connection with his research on his uncle and other Commonwealth prisoners of war incarcerated in Stalag VIIIB/344. Having found “Heinz Löwenstein” mentioned in Post 16, Brian naturally wondered whether “his” Heinz Loewenstein was the same person as “my” Heinz Löwenstein. Two clues in my publication convinced him they were one and the same person. Firstly, his Heinz Loewenstein used the alias “Henry Goff,” a surname I’d mentioned in Post 16. “Goff” as it turns out was Heinz’s older sister Jeanne “Hansi” Goff, née Löwenstein’s (1902-1986) (Figure 5) married name. It was a sensible alias for Heinz, one he could easily have remembered if questioned under duress. Secondly, Brian discovered that my Heinz Löwenstein had the identical date of birth, the 8th of March 1905, as the prisoner of war records indicate for the Heinz he’d been researching.
Having resolved to our satisfaction that we were dealing with the same individual, Brian used the primary source documents he’d collected to develop a detailed timeline of Heinz’s activities and whereabouts during the Second World War. As I wrote in Post 137, Brian found these records in the United Kingdom’s National Archives: “Specifically, records created or inherited by the War Office’s Armed Forces Services containing ‘German Record cards of British and Commonwealth Prisoners of War and some Civilian Internees, Second World War,’ found in Catalogue WO (for War Office) 416 are pertinent.” The National Archives includes records mentioning both Heinz Löwenstein (spelled “Loewenstein”) and his alias “Henry Goff.”
The most informative German Record card for tracking Heinz Löwenstein’s family background and emplacements during his captivity is his Personalkarte, his personnel card, record number WO 416/412/223. (Figures 6a-d) It includes his photograph, his father’s first name, his mother’s maiden name, his religion, and his date and place of birth, information all previously known to me. It also includes details previously unknown to me, such as his service number, his service (i.e., Palestinian Army), his regiment (i.e., Corps of Signals), his profession (i.e., electrician), place (i.e., Greece) and date of capture (29th April 1941), his POW number (i.e., 8576), and the Stalag he was initially interned (i.e., Stalag XVIIIA (Wolfsberg, Austria)).
Knowing the place and date of Heinz’s capture confirms he was taken prisoner during the Battle of Greece, also known as the “German invasion of Greece” or “Operation Marita.” Brian surmises he was ensnared in or near Kalamata on the Peloponnesian Peninsula. As I described in Post 137, he was likely quickly moved to the prison compound at Corinth, then perhaps a month later transferred to Salonika via Athens and the Brallos Pass. The “Salonika Transit Camp Frontstalag 183” was known to be a gateway to the Central European stalags.
As just mentioned, Heinz was initially imprisoned in Stalag XVIIIA in Wolfsberg, Austria after being transported by cattle truck from the Salonika Transit Camp. A map found in John Borrie’s book, “Despite Captivity: A Doctor’s Life as Prisoner of War,” indicates roughly the route by which the author arrived in Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf via Wolfsberg from Salonika, probably the identical path which brought Heinz to the same stalag. (Figure 7)
Obviously, Brian’s interest in Heinz Löwenstein is that both Heinz and Brian’s uncle were interned in Stalag VIIIB/344, though there is no evidence their paths crossed.
As I discussed in detail in Post 137, between September 1941, likely shortly after Heinz’s arrival at Stalag VIIIB/344, and June 1943, Heinz was assigned to work at eight detached work labor camps affiliated with Stalag VIIIB/344; assigning and using prisoners of war as labor in work camps was a common practice.
Most attempted and/or successful prisoner escapes took place from these work camps as these were easier to flee from. In Heinz’s case, his Personalkarte notes three attempted escapes, including one from a labor camp designated as “E479” in Tarnowitz. In Post 137, I quoted at length from a book by Cyril Rofe, “Against the Wind,” where Heinz’s remarkable flight and eventual recapture in Danzig, Germany (today: Gdańsk, Poland) with a man named Joe Powell (Figure 8) was described. What facilitated Heinz’s escapes was his fluency in German since he’d been born in Danzig. What Rofe states and what the entries on Heinz’s Personalkarte confirm is that the repercussions for his attempted escapes were minimal, typically no more than seven days in solitary confinement.
An illegible notation on Heinz’s Personalkarte dated the 15th of September 1943 (see Figure 6d) suggests a fourth escape, a successful one. As I learned, thanks once again to Brian, and discussed in detail in Post 137, record number WO 224/95 from the UK National Archives places “Heinz Loewenstein” among 20 POW escapees interned at Camp Siklós in Hungary in November 1943. As a related aside, we know from elsewhere that the holding facility at Camp Siklós, where sanitary conditions were deplorable, had by then been relocated to the nearby castle estate of Count Mihály Andrássy in Szigetvár in August 1943, where conditions were excellent.
In any case, record WO 224/95 is an inspection report written on the 16th of November 1943 by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in its capacity as a Protecting Power based on an 8th of November examination of the holding facility at Szigetvár. The fact that “Heinz Loewenstein’s” name is listed (Figure 9) in the report among the 20 POWs being held there confirms he successfully made it to Hungary following a fourth escape attempt from Stalag VIIIB/344. In Post 163, Postscript, I discussed the means and likely route by which Heinz ultimately wound up at Szigetvár.
A little background. A state of war did not exist between Hungary and the Allies until March 19, 1944, when the Nazis invaded and occupied Hungary. Before the Nazi invasion, any escaping Allied prisoners caught in Hungary by the authorities would expect no more than internment within the country; there was no concern that any POWs would be returned to German control. This explains Heinz’s detention at Count Andrássy’s estate in Szigetvár, Hungary. However, upon the German occupation of Hungary on March 19th, the Wehrmacht immediately headed there and recaptured most of the POWs detained there. This unfortunately included Heinz Löwenstein.
A little more background. The British and Commonwealth POWs at Szigetvár had always intended to reach the Allied lines by linking up with local partisans who would guide them through the treacherous terrain to the south in then-northern Yugoslavia occupied by the Germans to safe areas further south where they could then be flown out to southern Italy and beyond. Written accounts confirm that the multi-lingual Heinz had already been tasked and had established contact with the Hungarian partisans, and that the POWs at Szigetvár were at most weeks away from fleeing Hungary.
Things got complicated, however, following South African Lt. Col. Charles Telfer Howie’s escape from Stalag VIIIB/344 after he successfully reached Budapest, Hungary; I wrote about Howie’s escape from Stalag VIIIB/344 in Post 163, Postscript and write more about it below. Before the Germans invaded Hungary on March 19th, Howie was actively working with the underground to try and “flip” Hungary to the Allies. While their efforts were ultimately undermined by spies and the Nazi-affiliated Arrow Cross Party, the POWs at Szigetvár were supposed to have played a critical role. An Allied negotiating team had been expected to land near Szigetvár and be rounded up with their help; the POWs were threatened with a post-WWII court martial if they tried to escape before the negotiating team arrived. Howie, however, had promised to warn the British POWs at Szigetvár if the Germans invaded, but the message alerting them to the German occupation was never delivered and the POWs were retaken. More about this can be found in Post 163, Postscript.
As I alluded to above and discussed in Post 137, the ICRC’s inspection report listed Heinz under his given name. This is a list that would presumably have been available to or seized by the Germans when they occupied Szigetvár on March 19, 1944, and recaptured the escaped POWs detained there. For this reason, it is an enduring mystery how Heinz magically “transformed” into his doppelgänger “Henry Goff” and was later assigned a brand-new POW number. Given how meticulous the Germans were about record keeping, logically this should not have happened.
Brian continues to play a pivotal role in terms of finding relevant written accounts and uncovering postwar interrogation reports discussing the escape of British POWs from Stalag VIIIB/344. Let me get into these now as I will eventually tie them into recent archaeological discoveries that support the written accounts.
Brian interacts with Facebook in a way that I don’t. I’m not directly involved in social media, no doubt to my detriment. Let me provide two examples.
A few years ago, Brian discovered some group pictures of Commonwealth POWs interned in Stalag VIIIB/344 that someone had posted on Facebook. I continue to be amazed that one of these photographs includes a barely recognizable photo of an understandably very haggard-looking Heinz Löwenstein. (Figure 10) It was likely taken between 1941 and 1943. Heinz, born in 1905, would have been among the older POWs. And, in fact, some POW accounts describe him as an “elder statesman.”
The second instance where Brian found pertinent information on Facebook was precisely on the 24th of July 2025. It involved a post by a Polish gentleman named Cuba Kubacki on a private group chat that Brian is active on. Brian sent me a screen shot of Cuba’s English-language post. (Figure 11)
As followers can read, Cuba is part of a research and exploration group called “Wataha” (formerly “Wataha Grupa Badawczo Ekspolacyjna”). (Figures 12-13) The group is working under permit in collaboration with archaeologists conducting research in the former prisoner of war camp in Łambinowice, currently focused on the section of the camp that housed British POWs. Using metal detectors, the group has found a vast number of artifacts lost or left behind by the prisoners; these are being precisely mapped, then handed over to the Central Museum of Prisoners of War in Łambinowice-Opole (“Centralne Muzeum Jencow Wojennych”) for curation. Łambinowice is today a “Site of National Remembrance.”
Just a brief history on Łambinowice. In the 1860s, the Prussian Army established an artillery range near the village of Lamsdorf (today: Łambinowice, Poland). During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, between 3,500 and 4,000 French soldiers were detained at Lamsdorf, several dozen of whom died. During WWI, the POW camp at Lamsdorf was one of the largest camps in the territory of Germany with 90,000 soldiers of various nationalities interned here, about 7,000 of whom died. After the Treaty of Versailles, the camp was decommissioned.
It was recommissioned in 1939 to house Polish prisoners following the German invasion of Poland which started the Second World War in September 1939. Later during the war, over 300,000 POWs of different nationalities were kept at the camp, including Brits, Poles, French, Yugoslavians, Belgians, Italians, Americans, and Russians. The most numerous were the soldiers of the Red Army. In 1941, a separate camp, Stalag VIIIF was set up for the roughly 200,000 Soviet POWs; about 40,000 of them died.
Polish insurgents, including women and children, were brought to the camp in October 1943 after the Germans had crushed the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. The camp was liberated on the 17th of March 1945.
In 1945-1946, the camp was used by the Soviet-installed Polish Ministry of Public Security to house some 8,000-9,000 Germans, both POWs and civilian. Polish army personnel being repatriated from POW camps were also processed through Łambinowice and sometimes held there for several months. Some were later released, others sent to Gulags in Siberia. About 1,000-1500 German prisoners died from things such as malnutrition and violence.
In 1968 the area of the former camp and the POW cemeteries at Łambinowice were recognized as a Monument of National Remembrance, altered later to a Site of National Remembrance.
Ongoing archaeological work has been focused on searching for the escape tunnels within the British part of the camp. What obviously caught my attention in Cuba’s post was his mention of Heinz Löwenstein. Though not specifically cited, it is clear Cuba had stumbled on my blog and the posts about Heinz. He had obviously found the map of the escape tunnel from Barrack 19B included in Claerwen Howie’s book that I reproduced in Post 163, Postscript. (Figure 14)
Knowing my wife and I would be in southwestern Poland in August, and that Łambinowice is only 100km (~62 miles) from Wrocław, one of our destinations (Figure 15), I asked Brian to put me in touch with Cuba Kubacki. In very short order Cuba and I were in direct contact, and he gladly agreed to meet us at Łambinowice on August 23rd to give us a guided tour of the site.
In the interim, Cuba and I stayed in touch, and he continued to send me photographs of the Wataha Group’s work. (Figure 16) He also sent a link with astonishing photos secretly taken by one of the POWs while the escape tunnel from Barrack 19B was under construction. I’ll discuss the source of these photographs when I introduce a firsthand account of the construction of the escape tunnel Brian found in a book by John Mellor entitled “Forgotten Heroes: The Canadians at Dieppe.”
As planned, my wife and I met Cuba and his colleague Aram at Łambinowice on August 23rd and were given a general tour of the extensive site and introduced to the current director of the museum, Michal Jabacki. Among other things, the museum includes a 3D model of the site allowing visitors to visualize the layout of the various prisoner “lagers” (i.e., term referring to labor or concentration camp). (Figure 17)
Cuba’s July 24th Facebook post mentioned the anomalies the metal detectorists had found near the British lager that they were getting ready to examine; the Wataha Group thought these pointed to the existence of perhaps two escape tunnels likely including the one from Hut 19B and another from Hut 20B. (Figure 18) They were excavating the anomaly they believe is from Hut 19B when we visited so we had an opportunity to see for ourselves what they’d exposed.
A brief interjection. The prisoner barracks in the British lager lie in ruins. However, wartime aerial photographs survive showing their original layout. Using these photographs, the metal detectorists have outlined and mapped the former barracks. This is enabling them to narrow their search for the escape tunnels, most pertinently the one from Barrack 19B.
Let me quote from John Mellor’s book a section discussing the construction of the escape tunnel from Barrack 19B that Brian Cooper found:
“At the early meetings of the escape committee, various plans were discussed and in most cases discarded as being impractical. Sgt. Larry Palls [sic] of the Essex Scottish, who was of Dutch descent, belonged to an intelligence section of the Canadian Army. Initially, he was elected Chairman of the Escape Committee. Bill Lee was to be his assistant. Escape attempts were to be confined to people considered essential to the war effort who could also speak a foreign language, preferably German. Escape from the camp was a difficult accomplishment, but without an adequate knowledge of German, the escapee would most likely be picked up within 24 hours.
A red-headed sergeant named McMurray from the Royal Canadian Engineers was selected to engineer and build an escape tunnel. Under his direction, many men were approached to work on the construction or to dispose of the excavated soil. Other men were chosen as lookouts to be posted at all strategic points and to give advance warning of the approach of a guard.
Sgt. Lee’s hut, 19b, was chosen for the entrance to the tunnel because it was the nearest hut to the wire. Taking all precautions, a cunningly disguised trap-door was cut in the concrete floor under one of the bunks, and construction begun.
The shaft was sunk and tunneling commenced. Tools were non-existent. Improvised trowels, knives, even spoons were used to dig and hack the red soil, which was then packed into Red Cross boxes and handed to the disposal men. Under cover of darkness, the soil was mixed in with the earth in the vegetable patch, which, fortunately, was raised some 12 inches above the ground. The 40-holer latrine was another favourite dumping ground. Periodically, the human waste was carried away in a wagon drawn by two horses. Russian prisoners had been given the hideous job of cleaning out the latrine; they must have wondered at the large amounts of soil in the human waste—perhaps they thought it was due to the unwashed vegetables in the soup.
The shaft constructed by Sgt. McMurray sunk vertically nine feet beneath the bunk before the tunnel was begun in the direction of the wire, 100 feet away. The sandy soil provided a very treacherous support for the tunnel, so the leaders approached trustworthy men to sacrifice some of their bed-boards; Red Cross string was substituted for the boards. Teams of men worked day and night in rotating shifts. Many of the sappers digging in the tunnel had been hard-rock miners from Timmins; hour after hour they patiently clawed at the soil. Quite a few of them were French Canadians from the Gaspé Peninsula, hard-working men who worked under atrocious conditions without a murmur of complaint.
Light was provided by home-made lamps using pyjama-cord wicks soaked in margarine. The dense black fumes from the lamps soon filled the tunnel with choking carbon dioxide. Work was halted temporarily until some form of ventilation could be provided.
Besides Larry Palls [sic], the head of the escape committee, Bill Lee who would take the escapees through the tunnel, perhaps the most important man was the ‘Procurer’—Jimmy Maitland from Sarnia, Ontario. Larry Palls [sic] had chosen Jimmy for this special job because it required a great deal of nerve, ingenuity, and cheek. A supply of air required a pump and a pipe. Jimmy sat down and wrote ‘Pipe’ on a piece of paper. The tunnel would be approximately 100 feet long; therefore, opposite the word pipe, he wrote 100 feet. Taking a team of engineers, he marched them smartly over to the gate to the German sentry and waved the piece of paper under his nose. In the administrative compound, the Germans were erecting some new wooden huts. Eavestroughs on the roofs were connected to down-spouts, each 10 feet long. What better piping could be provided? In calm, detached fashion, Jimmy and the men proceeded to dismantle the downspouts. On the way back to the Canadian compound, he ordered ‘eyes right’ and gave the sentry a magnificent salute. The sentry blushed at this splendid example of military courtesy extended to a mere private soldier. With a rattle and a great flourish, he presented arms as the men marched proudly past carrying their booty.
A French Canadian named Robichard manufactured the bellows from an old groundsheet. A make-shift valve was fitted, then connected to the lengths of down-spouting; fresh, clean air flooded down the tunnel. Day after day for the next six months, Sapper Robichard would lie in a terribly confined space under the bunk and pump his bellows at a steady, monotonous rate. Such was his splendid contribution to the building of the escape tunnel.
The supply of bed-boards was running low as the tunnel grew in length. Again, Jimmy Maitland came to the rescue with his piece of paper and his ‘working party.’ By now, the sentries were becoming accustomed to the sight of Jimmy marching his men smartly through the gate. Der Canadian was a good soldier—very smart. This time Jimmy returned with a load of prime oak planks for the tunnel, which was then passing under the roadway and required a firm roof.” (Mellor, p. 108-110)
There is a lot to unpack in John Mellor’s account. I’ll touch on only a few details. As an aside, I note that part of the story reminds me of the famous 1963 movie starring Steve McQueen, “The Great Escape,” which was about a mass breakout of 76 Allied prisoners from the German POW camp Stalag Luft III on the night of March 24-25, 1944. I’m also reminded of the 1985 TV series “MacGyver,” where a resourceful secret agent uses his intellect, scientific knowledge, and improvisation to escape dangerous situations, often using everyday items, such as paper clips, much as the POWs constructing the escape tunnel at Lamsdorf were obviously compelled to do in manufacturing a pipe and bellows, etc.
Above, I alluded to rare photographs Cuba found posted on Facebook taken at Stalag VIIIB/344 including some taken during the construction of the escape tunnel from Barrack 19B. It was initially thought they might have been taken at Stalag Luft III in Żagań, the inspiration, as just mentioned, for the movie “The Great Escape.” However, Brian found a 1955 magazine article with the photos confirming they’d been taken at Stalag VIIIB/344 in Lamsdorf by Warrant Officer Kenneth Thomas Hyde of the Royal Canadian Air Force. (Figures 19a-e) Brian also tracked down Ken Hyde’s liberation questionnaire (i.e., UK National Archives WO 344) and a special questionnaire (i.e., UK National Archives WO 208) he completed, both of which place him at Stalag VIIIB/344 from 1942 until the end of 1944 or January 1945. (Figures 20a-b) Ken was never at Stalag Luft III in Żagań so obviously his photos were not taken there.
Additionally, Brian found two of Ken Hyde’s pictures in the book “In Enemy Hands: Canadian Prisoners of War 1939-45” by Daniel G. Dancocks, and another in John Mellor’s book “Forgotten Heroes: The Canadians at Dieppe,” providing further confirmation the pictures were taken at Stalag VIIIB/344.
On familysearch.org Brian found the following description about Ken:
“Kenneth was known as Ken. As a young man he gained skills in photography. He left home at the age of 17, later joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and was a navigator. His plane was shot down, and he became a German Prisoner of War during World War II and remained in captivity until the war ended in 1945. He took photos through the buttonhole of his coat, and later these were published. He donated proceeds received to the Red Cross, stating that without their help they should not have survived. He was head of the escape committee in the prison camp, escaped twice. He was able to build a radio and help forge passports for the prisoners. After his repatriation in England, he returned to Alberta and earned his living as a photographer. He was involved in aerial photography and mapping. Lived in Calgary.”
Not to diminish Ken Hyde’s service, but I would simply note it is well known that the head of the Escape Committee at Stalag VIIIB/344 was not Ken Hyde but the Canadian Sgt. Laurens Pals, as his surname is correctly spelled. Nonetheless, Hyde’s photos prove he played a pivotal role in the construction of the escape tunnel. See discussion below.
Let me discuss a few things about John Mellor’s account of the construction of the tunnel coming from Barrack 19B at Stalag VIIIB/344. As I also talked about in Post 163, Postscript, South African Lt. Col. Charles Telfer Howie escaped through this tunnel. As Howie’s daughter Claerwen Howie recounted in her book about her father, “Agent by Accident,” he suffered a lifetime of nightmares from the claustrophobic imaginings of being trapped in the tiny, dark escape passage.
John Mellor correctly identifies the head of the escape committee at Stalag VIIIB/344 as the Canadian “Sgt. Larry Palls,” who I discussed in Post 163, Postscript. He was captured during the Dieppe operation on the 19th of August 1942 and incarcerated in Lamsdorf from the 1st of September 1942 until the 6th of March 1945.
Sgt. Pals himself escaped in May 1944 but returned to the camp of his own volition when the partisan at an address in Metz he’d been given warned him he was being watched by the Gestapo; knowing six future escapees were headed there, Pals returned to Stalag VIIIB/344 to ward them off. Upon his recapture, for this valorous act the Germans gave him 28 days solitary confinement.
Brian transcribed the lengthy report prepared by interrogation officers following Sgt. Pals’ liberation at the end of the Second World War from a place named Hohenfels. The source of the interrogation report is “UK Archives Catalogue Reference WO 208/3336/98.”
In his interrogation report, Pals remarks the following: “By that time [EDITOR’S NOTE: JULY 1943] I had an assistant, Pte. LICHENSTEIN, a native of DANZIG who had enlisted in the Palestinian Army and was a P/W at LAMSDORF.” Clearly referring to Heinz Löwenstein, while not surprised that Heinz had been part of the Escape Committee, I’d previously been unaware of this fact.
Regarding the construction of the escape tunnel, Pals provides more details: “It took about eight weeks to complete this tunnel, the length of which was about 60 ft. About six men did the actual digging, while about 15 assisted in watching and in the disposal of the dirt.”
Regarding Howie’s and Löwenstein’s escape from Stalag VIIIB/344 along with those of others, Pals writes the following:
“In Aug 43 a party of about 40 officers arrived at the Stalag from somewhere in ITALY. They were supposed to go to STRASSBURG. Amongst these were Lt-Col. HOWIE (South African) (SKP/4296) [EDITOR’S NOTE: HOWIE WAS CAPTURED DURING THE SIEGE OF TOBRUK IN LIBYA] He suggested that he wanted to make an escape and go to HUNGARY. He made contact with me through R.S.M SHERRIFF. Lt-Col. HOWIE was fitted out with the necessary papers, in company with a Jewish Pte. who spoke Hungarian – Pte. WEINSTEIN (Palestinian Army). They escaped through our tunnel about two days after the Lt. Col.’s arrival at the Stalag.
Lt-Col. HOWIE reached Budapest successfully and worked there with the Underground until the occupation of HUNGARY by the Germans. He was not captured but I do not know what happened to him. Pte. WEINSTEIN was captured during the occupation of HUNGARY and was returned to Stalag VIIIB in 44.
Several of the other officers who arrived with Lt-Col. HOWIE came to me and I instructed them how to escape. I also gave them samples of documents and rubber stamps. Capt. WILLIAMS (Brit) and Pte. SMITH (Brit) escaped two days later through the tunnel but were recaptured on the Swiss border and returned to the camp. Pte. SMITH, who belonged to SOE and whose name was a ‘nom de guerre’ was with us on the DIEPPE operation and it was felt necessary that he should return to the UK as soon as possible. He [Williams] made a successful escape later.
Six men had made escapes in one week and I considered it necessary to cement the tunnel up again. These six people had been missed by that time. To cover up the escapes through the tunnel I had arranged that holes were made in the barbed wire to make the Germans believe that the personnel had escaped through the wire. At the same time, I made arrangements for several ‘nuisance’ escapes from the different Working Parties.
In Oct 44 (sic, 43) we reopened the tunnel and six more people escaped. CSM McLEAN (FMR) (SDIC/CMF/EAST/SKP.4(a)) and Pte. LICHENSTEIN (Palestinian) (SKP/4574) [EDITOR’S NOTE: HEINZ LÖWENSTEIN] went to Budapest; Pte. DAGENAIS, G (FMR) and Pte. SPAH (Palestinian) went to FRANCE; CSM PARRY (Brit) and A.B. MASON (Royal Navy) escaped but were recaptured at the border with SWITZERLAND and eventually returned to the camp. CSM McLEAN and Pte. LICHENSTEIN were successful and as far as I know reached the UK eventually. [EDITOR’S NOTE: HEINZ LÖWENSTEIN WAS RECAPTURED IN SZIGETVÁR, HUNGARY WHEN THE GERMANS INVADED ON MARCH 19, 1944, AND NEVER MADE IT TO ENGLAND] Pte. SPAH and Pte DAGENAIS have not been heard of to date and as far as can be found out through Canadian Records, Pte. DAGENAIS from the FMR is still missing.
We again sealed up the tunnel after having made several holes in the barbed wire fence to cover up our actual means of escape.”
Pal’s description brings us to the work that the archaeologists in collaboration with the metal detectorists are now undertaking. As mentioned above, the day my wife and I visited, the Wataha Group was excavating one of the anomalies they believe was the escape tunnel from Barrack 19B. Astonishingly, later that same day they fully exposed the remains of the tunnel. Cuba sent us pictures of some of the artifacts they recovered and the rubble-filled tunnel. (Figures 21a-b; 22)
In his interrogation report, Pals remarked the following: “In Nov. 43 the Germans walked directly to the entrance of the tunnel, which had been cemented over, in Barrack 19B and dug up the tunnel. It is unknown who gave away the information to the Germans.” Pals remarks the same thing happened in January 1944 to an escape tunnel coming from Barrack 22B which had been partially completed to a length of 40 ft. Collaborators were a constant worry. Pals notes the construction of yet a third tunnel: “In the spring of 44 we built another tunnel in Barrack 9B with the intention of making an organised mass break of about 12 men. On 17 May 1944 the tunnel was ready. I intended to go myself.”
A contemporary photo Brian found in John Mellor’s book shows the tunnel exit from Hut 19B after its discovery by German guards. (Figure 23) In the case of both escape tunnels, upon their discovery, the Germans demolished the escape tunnels and, according to Ken Hyde, had the POWs fill them back in with rubble, bricks, and rocks. This is what the Wataha Group exposed on the day we visited.
As a side note, in his Facebook post, Cuba remarked that the metal detectorists had identified two anomalies near the British lager. As shown in Figure 18, one is the tunnel coming from Barrack 19B, and the other is possibly from Barrack 20B. However, in his interrogation report Pals mentions the never completed tunnel from Barrack 22B and another completed one from Barrack 9B, so more sleuthing will be needed to find these.
In any case, standing in the very spot that my father’s first cousin had escaped Stalag VIIIB/344 through the tunnel from Barrack 19B was exhilarating, literally imagining where he experienced a life-changing event 82 years ago! (Figure 24)
As readers can appreciate, there are so many moving parts related to the escape of British Commonwealth POWs from Stalag VIIIB/344, most that transcend Heinz Löwenstein’s own escape. Inevitably, there will be inconsistencies between the various accounts due to, among other things, faulty POW memories, brutal living conditions, aliases and swapped identities, unknown names of fellow prisoners, a natural desire to portray oneself in a most favorable manner, etc.
Archaeological investigations provide an opportunity to answer some unanswered questions, such as the length of the escape tunnel. For example, Mellor writes the tunnel was 100 feet long, Pals’ interrogation report says it was 60 feet long, and Claerwen Howie’s map claims it was 44 meters (~144 feet). Excavations can reveal the actual length and depth of the tunnel. The various POW diaries and post-WWII interrogation reports tell us something about the construction of the tunnel and the number of men involved but there will always be some discrepancies, something archaeological studies won’t necessarily answer.
In terms of other things, we can only surmise based on the preponderance of evidence, for example, the approximate date of Heinz’s fourth escape from Stalag VIIIB/344. His Personalkarte implies he may have escaped in mid-September 1943; Pals’ interrogation report says he escaped in October; and Claewen Howie claims he escaped in December 1943. The ICRC inspection report placed Heinz in Szigetvár on November 8, 1943, so Heinz probably escaped in October 1943, perhaps late September.
Let me conclude this very lengthy and involved post with a few remarks. It’s likely given the various and divergent accounts from which I’ve drawn information that I’ll revisit and update this post. Brian’s research continues to uncover additional POW biographies which may change the narrative. In addition, Brian has been accessing and reading the interrogation reports for the multiple POWs identified by Sgt. Laurens Pals as having escaped to Hungary using the tunnel leading from Barrack 19B. In combination with the ongoing archaeological work this is likely to yield some unexpected surprises that may compel an update to this publication.
REFERENCES
Borrie, John. Despite Captivity: A Doctor’s Life as Prisoner of War. Whitecoulls, 1975.
Dancocks, Daniel G. In Enemy Hands: Canadian Prisoners of War, 1939-45. Hurtig, 1983.
Howie, Claerwen. Agent by Accident. Lindlife Publishers CC, 1997.
Mellor, John. Forgotten Heroes: The Canadians at Dieppe. Methuen, 1975.
Rofe, Cyril. Against the Wind. 1st ed., Hodder & Stoughton, 1956.
