Gross Tychowo
In the summer of 1944, with Russians winning the battle in the East and the US doing the same thing in the west, Hitler put the stalags under the control of the Gestopo, and the SS. He knew the war was probably lost and he wanted hold the prisoners hostage for bargaining chips after the war and to punish the flyers for bombing the German cities. He also engages the Hitler Youth to join in the punishment of the American flyers.
July 1944, he (sorry bad internet and cell coverage, pictures out of order)
Example of barns POW slept in on march
began evacuating the 10,000 POWs of Stalag Luft 6, the stalag nearest Russia to move the prisoners further into Germany and keep then from being liberated by the advancing Russian army. Vic, my father, was in the two-thousand men who began this 72 hour, nightmare of a trip in the hold of a coal scow on the Baltic and ended being run two miles, while police dogs bit at their legs and Hitler Youth prodded them on with bayonet stabs to keep them moving. Shackled together, the airmen struggled to get each to the top of the hill. The boat ride and run up the hill to Stalag Luft 4 were two of the most punishing events of the men’s POW ordeal, but more was to come.
As the allies continued to advance, Hitler ordered a forced march to hold the POWs hostage for later use. The march, The Death March, for my father lasted 86 days and covered 600 miles, sometimes doubling back over previously traveled routes. Numbers are sketchy, but men died and the ones that lived suffered PTSD and other lifelong ailments. No warm clothes and many with makeshift shoes, little food or uncontaminated water, dealt with below freezing temperatures and dysentery, while sleeping on the ground outside or in barns along the way.
Our trip has allowed us to stand at the very places the men went through these atrocities and it was a very emotional and meaningful visit. We appreciate the Polish men and women who are working to keep the memories of our fathers’ imprisonment alive. Our fathers and the Polish people were fighting the same battles for freedom. Jim
Pawel Ubanek, the leader of the SL 4 committee
