Some of the things that have amazed me about Poland: A vignette.
I had been listening to the radio and the music score of the movie The Great Escape was playing. What a score! It always makes me feel good. Yet, this time, it triggered some memories.
The 2009 Times heading ‘Great Escape’ POWs remember comrades…and boo ’silly’ Steve McQueen‘ summarized it all.
Many years ago I did have my Great Escape encounter. I could understand the frustration of the then survivors of the horrific event to realize that most people would only recall what happened 65 years earlier through a fictionalized account of the real feat, starring Steve McQueen, who played a character that presumably was an amalgamation of many of the heroes who were murdered by the Nazis.
The movie, to this day, is still one of the most entertaining and chilling portrayals of World War II incarcerations and man’s longing to be free from brutal restraint. But it is Hollywood. Based on a real event, Hollywood took liberties. There was no Steve McQueen character in real life.
Yet, despite the tale woven out of real events, the basic story told was true.
All the real life characters who were involved in the daring escape, and subsequently executed by the Nazi Germans, are buried in a beautiful and serene cemetery in Poland: in Poznan, to be exact.
It was a little tidbit I discovered while visiting the air force base where US pilots were training Polish pilots to fly their F-16s.
I walked through the cemetery with my young daughter and spent a long time finding the grave of the main character of that feat, Roger Bushell, and regaled her with some of the facts that I had learnt along the way. What a hero and what an ill-fated deed.
The BBC has more information on Bushell’s daring caper that occurred in Poland. There are so many such stories waiting to be told.
Poznan Cemetery, Poland. Photo by Pawel Macuga.
Dum Spiro Spero 