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The Not So Great Escape
12 August 2009 by Alexandra Orr.
9 Comments
Collection,Collection Highlights,From the collection,New acquisitions,News,Personal Stories, Escape Maps, HMAS Sydney, HSK Kormoran, Prisoner of War, Theodore Detmers
On the 19th November 1941, Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney II was lost, with all hands, off the coast of Western Australia after engaging with the German raider HSK Kormoran. The discovery in March 2008 of the final resting place of the Sydney and the Kormoran attracted much attention. Understandably, there has been much discussion over the circumstances surrounding the loss of the Sydney; however the story of the Kormoran’s Commander, Theodor Anton Detmers, and that of his crew, continued long after the battle. Almost a week after the sinking of the Kormoran, Detmers was picked up in a lifeboat along with other crewmen. Brought to Australia as a prisoner of war, he and several of his countrymen were detained in Dhurringile Prison Camp, Victoria. It was not long before the Commander and his countrymen had formulated a plan to escape their fortress using a hand-drawn map of Australia’s east coast, now held by the Australian War Memorial.
Group portrait of German Officer prisoners of war (POWs) interned at Dhurringile. Detmers is in the front row, third from left. 030185_05The Liberation of Colditz Castle
17 July 2009 by Dianne Rutherford.
2 Comments
Collection,From the collection,Personal Stories, Prisoner of War
This 8 cm piece of shrapnel is a souvenir from the liberation of the infamous prisoner of war camp, Oflag IVC - Colditz Castle. It was collected by an Australian soldier, Lieutenant Jack Millett. Millett was an ‘incorrigible’, one of the prisoners held by the Germans at Colditz for making repeated escape attempts from other camps. In 1942, Millett was caught trying to dig a tunnel out of Oflag VIB at Warburg with another prisoner. In 1943, he took part in a mass escape from Oflag VIIB at Eichstatt. Millett was on the run for five days before he was finally captured by two Hitler Youths with large dogs. After his recapture, he served 14 days detention as punishment and was then sent to Colditz Castle, where he remained until April 1945.
How to make a POW escape map
09 July 2008 by Dianne Rutherford.
5 Comments
Collection, How To..., Maps, Prisoner of War
Prisoners in German POW camps were very resourceful. My favourite items to have come out of POW camps in Europe are the maps they made for escape attempts. Early in the war men would draw their maps by hand, but this took a long time and at the end you would have only one copied map. If many prisoners were trying to escape it would take too long to make all the maps they required – especially for large escapes, like the famous “Great Escape” from Stalag Luft III.
The handrawn master map and a copy made by Jack Millett in Oflag IVC, Colditz.One quick and easy method to create many copies of a map was through jelly mimeograph. Recently the Memorial acquired the collection of Jack Millett, a Western Australian man captured at Crete who later became the main map maker in Colditz. The collection included two ‘master’ maps (i.e. the handdrawn originals on waxy paper) and ten mimeograph copied maps.
I have been interested in seeing how well the theory of what I had read would work, so one weekend I got together some supplies I found around my home and did the following experiment in my kitchen. read on
