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Liberation

A part from Russian propaganda movie which shows liberation of Stalag XXA in 1945. This movie presents English and French soldiers who are leaving Torun. It is worth mentioning that liberation took place in the winter, so this sunny weather you can see in the movie is slightly inappripriate. Moreover, from the sources we have found, the liberation looked slightly diffrent:

"It was an uphill grade and the road was ice-covered and slippery. Russian, French and British prisoners jostled up the road in their hundreds. Soon we gained the comparative shelter of the woods but nobody thought of stopping for a rest.(...)

Wouldn’t we ever stop for a rest? Then, after covering about 12 kilometres in all, we were directed off the road to a small farmhouse. Gratefully we lowered the stretchers to the ground and sat about resting our weary limbs."

Comments

  1. BarbaraWTJuly 5, 2012 at 5:45 AM

    Hi
    Thanks for so much interesting information. Can you tell me how the prisoners in the video above got to stay in Stalag XXA, when others were sent on the Forced March in January 1945?
    Thanks
    Barbara

    ReplyDelete
  2. MFV PansyJanuary 31, 2015 at 8:58 AM

    hi barbara, from what I can recall from my father's experiences, after the filming, they were pretty much just left to their own devices for a while and had the run of the place and the town of Elbing as well, as the russians advanced west. They were alter picked up again by the russians and suffered a combination of the forced march and working for the russians

    ReplyDelete

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