From Commandant to Captive

At 6:30 a.m. on 27 January 1945 Col. Friedrich von Lindeiner the court martialed and exiled gentleman ex-Commandant of Stalag Luft III sat in the waiting room of the Görlitz train station hoping to return to Sagan Germany to fight the approaching Russians. The distance from Görlitz to Sagan was 28.5 miles. He arrived fifteen hours later as 10000 Allied prisoners of war were evacuating his former camp. Like them he would soon view the war from both inside and outside the barbed wire. Later as a prisoner of war he was held by the British for two years before returning to a devastated and divided Germany.