The date is March, 1943, and in a prisoner of war camp inside occupied Poland, Royal
Canadian Air Force pilot William Ash approaches the camp's toilet facilities.
A single POW leans against the latrine's doorway, casually keeping watch on the rest of the
camp.
The POW nods at Ash as he approaches and allows him to enter the small, squat latrine.
Inside are two rows of toilets, built in the classic Roman style- nine boxed-in seats ring
the sides of the room and consist of nothing more than concrete boxes with no dividers
between them.
The wooden seats lead down to a large concrete pit underneath where hundreds of prisoners
relieve themselves into every day.
A small hole leads to a huge sewage pit which is drained every week into the waiting truck
of a local farmer who uses the camp's waste to fertilize his fields.
As Ash enters the building he spots two men seated at the far seats, who return his nod
of greeting.
One of them stands and lifts the seat he was just sitting on, revealing a hole in the concrete
that is just barely large enough for a man to squeeze through.
The stench of human waste wafts up from below, powerful enough to make the men's eyes tear
up as they fight the urge to vomit, yet powering through the horrid assault on their nostrils,
the men climb down into the hole one by one.
As they land a few inches of waste water splash urine and feces all over the men, but they
ignore it as they turn their attention to the task at hand.
The men remove a panel that's been made to look like a false wall and reveal a small
chamber beyond which has been carved from the frozen soil itself.
Using candles made of boot strings and margarine held in a tin dish, the men join three others
who are already waiting there and strip down to their underwear.
One man sits at a bellows made of old leather kit bags, and as he works it he pushes air
through a pipe made of old cans into the tunnel which the crew has been digging for weeks
now.
Two men now move down into that tunnel while the remainder stay behind to handle the soil
that the diggers displace in their dig.
The entire crew is split up into shifts, with some men taking turns digging while others
man the bellows, dispose of the dirt, or stands watch above.
Disposal of the dirt is accomplished by pushing the dirt through the sump directly under the
toilets above and into the huge sewage pit beyond.
Once a week Polish farmer Franciszek Lewandowski arrives at the camp and pumps the sewage out
for use on his farm, yet Lewandowski has begun to notice more and more dirt in the waste
water.
Before he has a chance to complain to the Nazi guards though another prisoner, Josef
Bryks, a young Czechoslovakian, informs Lewandowski of the escape plan.
The Polish farmer is no fan of the Nazis, especially after their invasion and occupation
of his home, and keeps the plan a secret, doing his part to aid the would-be escapees
by dutifully carting away the soil.
As the digging team finishes its work for the day, the third team enters the tunnel
and begins the job of shoring up the tunnel walls and ceiling.
The tunneling work, carried out with nothing more than cut-out aluminum cans, is dangerous
work, and the tunnel is under constant threat of collapse.
Each day that the tunnel extends further and deeper the men require just a little bit more
courage to enter the dark tunnel, not knowing if that's the day the tunnel will collapse
and trap them with little to no hope of rescue.
It is the job of the third team then to enter and shore up the sides and ceiling as best
they can, using wooden boards taken from their barracks and even their bed frames themselves.
The boards make for a rudimentary shoring, but help add a bit of safety to the entire
endeavor.
As they shore up the freshly dug length of tunnel, the men also extend the air pipe which
brings in oxygen to the tunneling crew.
They use powdered milk cans for the job, cutting them so that they fit end to end.
The air they pump is from the latrine itself, and fetid with the stench of human waste-
but it brings life-saving oxygen as the men dig deeper and further into the earth.
To expedite the process of digging, the men have developed an ingenious system to move
freshly dug earth to the latrine sump for disposal.
Two lengths of rope extend down the tunnel, and at one end is an empty sack.
The diggers fill the sack with dirt and then give the rope a sharp tug, which causes the
man at the halfway point to begin hauling on the rope to bring the dirt out of the tunnel.
Once it reaches the midway point, that man attaches it to the second rope who's end he
has with him, and then gives that rope a sharp tug.
The men at the entrance then drag the sack from the halfway point all the way to the
entrance of the tunnel, where the dirt is emptied into the latrine sump.
The system is rudimentary, and nowhere near as sophisticated as the homemade railroad
tracks and trolleys that the men at the Stalag Luft 3 prison complex would use to escape
and serve as inspiration for the film, The Great Escape.
Yet the process saves countless hours of labor as it takes a half hour to squeeze down the
two foot by two foot tunnel each day.
In early March of 1943, the team digging at the end of the tunnel begin to dig directly
upwards.
By their calculations they have dug several hundred feet past the perimeter fencing, a
task which required them to not just dig out from their starting point, but down into the
rocky soil to a depth of over a dozen feet in order to avoid the seismic sensors that
the Germans have installed to detect digging.
Once well out of the fence, the tunnel begins to angle upwards again and now the men are
digging straight up.
One of them takes a long stick and pushes it into the ceiling above, feeling resistance
for two feet before the stick gives way to the topside- the tunnel is finished, and to
avoid detection the last two feet of the tunnel will be dug up on the day of their escape.
Now the men prepare for their breakout.
While the dig teams were working for weeks on the tunnel, Brysk, the young Czech, has
been helping secure fake papers for the escapees.
To do this he managed to talk his way into being part of a detail that is taken every
week under guard to a produce store in town.
There the prisoner detail buys a few luxuries for the POWs such as chocolates, cigarettes,
and the sort- they pay for this from the meager wages paid to them by the German government
under its obligations to pay POWs for their labor via the Geneva Convention.
At the store a young Polish girl, Stefania Maludzinska, works behind the counter, and
it isn't long before she's swooning at Bryks' charms.
She has been helping to smuggle letters to Bryks' family members for months, but now
the escapees need her help in far more dangerous work.
Stefania has friends who work at town hall, and she has them steal official German forms
that will serve as a template for the forged identity papers needed by the escapees.
The identity papers will ID the escapees as Polish citizens after their escape, allowing
them to bypass security checkpoints and hide their identities as POWs.
Yet for the papers to look legitimate there is one more thing that is needed: a photograph
of each of the escapees to adorn their fake papers.
To get these photographs, Stefania takes the biggest risk of her life and helps secure
a small camera and film from a Polish laborer who used to be a teacher before the German
invasion.
Now he is forced to do hard labor and work rebuilding the same roads the Germans themselves
bombed in the invasion, and helping the prisoners escape will be his small measure of revenge
against the Nazis.
The camera and the film is smuggled into the camp via a seventeen year old boy who routinely
brings in a shipment of the prisoner's daily allowance of bread, all hidden safely amongst
the loafs.
After the prisoners take their photos the film is then smuggled out through the same
young teenage boy, who develops the photos himself in a makeshift photo lab inside his
parents' tiny apartment.
All of these brave Polish civilians assisting the escapees are taking huge risks, and discovery
of their involvement would certainly lead to a quick execution.
The date for the breakout is set to be March 5th, as those amongst the prisoners with meteorological
knowledge estimate that this will be the next moonless night.
In order to have the best chance of escape, the men must move under the cover of deepest
darkness, and with no moon in the sky they stand a good chance of being unseen by the
perimeter sentries.
The men decide that immediately after the five pm roll call, a group of them will head
straight to the tunnel and wall themselves in, until after lock-up at nine pm when the
rest of the group will sneak out of their bunks and make their way into the tunnel.
A mathematician amongst them calculates that the tunnel will be able to support up to thirty
three men for six hours before the oxygen runs out and the men asphyxiate- the figures
and the math both are rough, but it's the best the men have to go on.
At five PM on March 5th, the guards line up the POWs and conduct their daily count.
Satisfied that all men are accounted for, they are left alone for recreation time.
Eight hundred men move to the recreation ground where a rugby match has been staged in order
to help cover the escape attempt.
The men plotting their escape conceal clean clothes under coats, their pockets stuffed
with a concoction termed “the mixture”, a high energy food made by the prisoners.
In each of their pockets are also their identification papers, a map of the region, and a homemade
compass.
Overhead gray clouds build up and cold gusts of wind force the German guards to seek what
shelter they can inside their guard towers.
The men head to the latrine in pairs, and once inside ditch their overcoats and make
their way into the filth below.
As the night goes on the men are relieved to discover that the calculations for oxygen
supply were correct, and at last nine pm rolls around along with the final group to enter
the escape tunnel.
The men break through the last two feet of dirt at the end of the tunnel and crawl out
into freedom, grateful to leave the smelly, stinking tunnel behind at last.
The men break up into groups and head in different directions so as not to draw attention to
themselves, posing as travelers.
Unfortunately within the end of the week, all thirty six escapees would be recaptured
by the Germans, with many sent off to new prison camps.
Though the escape ultimately failed, it proved to be one of the most daring and smelliest
escapes of World War II, inspiring many heroic attempts by other Allied soldiers throughout
the rest of the conflict.
Think you could've stomached digging through a giant sewer to get to safety?
Let us know in the comments!
And as always if you enjoyed this video don't forget to Like, Share, and Subscribe for more
great content!