A
collection of stories, photos, art and information on Stalag Luft I
If you are a former Prisoner of War or a next of
kin of a POW, we invite you to sign and leave your email address so others that
come may find you. Please mention camp, compound, barracks and room numbers if
possible.
Memorial to the Stalag Luft I Prisoners of
War
in Barth, Germany
The memorial is physically
on the site where the German administration buildings were located. It is
beautifully landscaped with a large granite boulder sitting amidst a flower
garden. On the boulder are two bronze plaques, one written in German the
other in English. The text is as follows:
This plaque is
dedicated by the citizens of Barth and the Royal Air Force
Ex-Prisoners of War Association on 28 September 1996 to commemorate
all those held prisoner at Stalag Luft I, sited here from July 1940 to
May 1945: members of the British Commonwealth and United States of
American Air Forces and their Allies from the occupied countries and
the Soviet Union.
"NOTHING HAS
BEEN FORGOTTEN"
To one side of the boulder
are four flag poles flying British, American, Russian and the POW/MIA flags.
Forming the apex of a triangle, there are three types of trees: American
pine, British oak and Russian birch.
Memorial Plaque we had installed
in the Memorial Gardens at the 8th Air Force Heritage Museum in
Savannah, Georgia in memory of our father and his crew. As it states
they are America's Sons and Our Heroes
The Black Swan, piloted by Verne Woods, crashed
into a French farmer's barn in the small village of Bannalac in Brittany.
Fifty five years later, on October 31, 1998, Yves Carnot, the grandson
of the farmer into whose barn The Black Swan had crashed erected a small
granite
monument in memory of Verne Wood's two crew members who died there.
Carnot sent Verne a video of the ceremonies which were attended by some 300
people. Included among them was a representative of the American embassy in
Paris. But neither Verne nor any of the other surviving crew members were
able to attend. Earlier in the year, in May, 1998, Carnot had visited
Verne and his wife in Lexington, Massachusetts, bringing with him several
aluminum scraps from The Black Swan recovered from the crash site. Verne
referred Mr. Carnot to the curator of the 91st Bomb Group museum in
Bassingbourn, England, and Carnot sent the curator several scrap pieces for
display in the museum. The curator, Steve Pena, subsequently wrote Verne to
say: "You'll be pleased to learn that pieces of The Black Swan have at last
returned to Bassingbourn."
Memorial to the crew of "Ginger" erected by
the villagers of Schoeneck, France in 1998
In August, 1998, the French village of Schoeneck,
France, where "Ginger" crashed, erected a granite monument to honor
George Lesko and his crew for their efforts to
liberate France. It was around this time that George learned that four of
his crewmembers had been executed by the SS shortly after bailing out of
their plane in 1944. The SS men responsible for this were tried in the
Nuremburg process at the end of the war. They were
convicted and sentenced
to death by hanging.
