The Great Escape – visiting Stalag Luft III – October 2026
Updated: 5 days ago
I’ve always been interested in the Great Escape since my father’s flight engineer, Frank McKenna, was part of the post war RAF team that went to Germany to search for the Gestapo killers of the 50 airmen executed on the orders of Hitler.
Finally, as part of a wider trip, I did manage to visit the site. The camp, Stalag Luft III is in Poland at Żagań (called Sagan when the Germans occupied this part of Poland) and the sites of interest are well marked out in the forest that has now grown up around them.
The tunnel used by the prisoners’, called Harry, is marked out on the ground along with the names of those executed. The tunnel exit, famously came up a little short of the forest and today a reconstructed guard tower has been built to show how close the exit was to it.
We also found the subway which those prisoners escaping by train would have taken to go under the train tracks and up into Żagań station.
Further from the campsite is a cemetery where the memorial to the fifty was relocated from the campsite. This originally held the ashes of the fifty and was built at the camp during the war by the remaining prisoners for their comrades.
There is also a museum with a reconstructed prisoner hut and even a reconstructed tunnel with a “dolly” to allow visitors to try out pulling themselves through. (The museum was closed when we visited but the tunnel was open!).
Should you which to read about how the Gestapo killers were tracked down by Frank McKenna, I recommend the book by Allen Andrews called Exemplary Justice (out of print but available second hand).
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