Secret P.O.W. photos

One P.O.W. CAMP

During WWII, Robert Kurtz along with over 10,000 Americans and British airmen, were held prisoner at Stalag Luft III - the prison where the Great Escape happened in 1944. Kurtz arrive in August of that year just months after Adolf Hitler ordered the murder of 50 escapees who had been recaptured. Life in the camp was especially tense at that time; nonetheless, the prisoners continued to dig tunnels and plan escape routes. Cameras smuggled into camp were particularly useful in helping the prisoners forge papers for escaped prisoners to use if questioned after an escape. After the war, these clandestine photos were turned in to military intelligence and several collections of these have been made public. Author Jim Kurtz found an envelope with a Texas post mark containing over 40 small (2”x3”) black and white images in his father’s green box. We are unsure of the sender and know some of the pictures are among collections in the US Air Force Academy’s McDermott Library.

recreation time for prisoners

The camera, either a DIY construction from smuggled parts or one brought in by bribed guards, would have primarily been used to take portrait shots for forged papers – papers that might get an escaping prisoner across occupied Europe. But they also caught moments of daily life. The resilience of people in times of stress can be both touching and inspiring. Here prisoners held in Stalag Luft III, the most famous WWII POW camp in Europe, play hockey on a winter’s day – skates would have come from YMCA packages.  In January of 1945 this rare photograph, probably as a negative, was carried across Germany in the desperate winter march. Who took the picture? Who carried it, and why?  These are questions for which we would love answers.

something from home

Red Cross parcels were a lifeline to P.O.W.s in WWII. Delivered to the camps, they contained tinned meats, fruits and vegetables, tobacco and cigarettes, chocolate, sometimes even clothes. They helped the prisoners survive, because of the almost starvation level of rations supplied by the Germans.  Despite the fact the food particularly was essential, and tobacco a luxury that made life a little easier; nonetheless, prisoners often took contents from the parcels and used them to bribe the guards – who were also struggling with very little to eat. The joy in receiving a truckload of parcels is evident on these P.O.W. faces. But with the lens of 20/20 hindsight, we can ask, not only what was in them on that day, but what would these men use them for?

long march through a blizzard

This photograph from Stalag Luft III looks out past the trip wire, and through the fence, into the snowy forest of what was then Germany, and is now Poland. It reveals a landscape very similar to those of the winter woods around Ipswich, Massachusetts where we had planned to shoot the re-enactment of the Long Winter March of 1945. Unfortunately snow completely missed the call time for the shoot, and we have a deadly virus to contend with. As we all hunker down and practice social isolation, it seems a good time to be aware of the comforts and blessings we DO have. Unlike the prisoners who were forced to take that march, most of us have adequate food, clothing and shelter. Modern communications allow us to speak with those we love, even if they are far away. But looking at the photograph, remember that this is what the world looked like when over 11,000 prisoners from this camp began a desperate march of many hundreds of miles across Poland and Germany. (Hitler had the camps evacuated as the Russians and American troops moved closer.) There was a blizzard; they had little food, ragged inadequate clothing, and many were ill.  (We now plan to shoot that story next fall or winter.)