Description
Stalag Luft III ‘The Great Escape’ cover signed by escape participants Ivo Tonder and B.A ‘Jimmy’ James MC
Ivo Tonder was a pre-war Czechoslovak pilot who served with Air Regiment 1 within the Czechoslovak army. After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, he was demobilised and worked as a designer in the Aero Vodochody near Prague. In 1939, shortly after his demobilisation, he escaped to France via Slovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon. In March 1940 he joined the Czechoslovak Depot in Adge. In France, he underwent appendix surgery and whilst still recovering escaped occupied France to Great Britain. He joined the RAF and after retraining to fly British aircraft he joined No.312 Czechoslovak Squadron reaching the rank of Flight Lieutenant.
On 3rd June 1942, Ivo Tonder did not return from an operation code-named Circus 6. His aircraft was shot down by a German Focke-Wulf FW 190 but he successfully bailed out and survived. However, after this accident, he was captured by the Germans and sent to Dulag Luft POW camp in Oberursel, Germany, for Gestapo interrogation. He was eventually transferred to the notorious Stalag Luft III in Sagan where he took part in two unsuccessful escapes and eventually succeeded in what is now referred to as The Great Escape. His role as a member of the escape group was as tailor and tunnel digger.
On the night of 24th March 1944 after his escape, he intended to head towards the north of Poland and catch a boat to freedom. This plan was later deemed impossible so instead, he headed towards Switzerland via Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately, he was recaptured by Gestapo and spend eight months in a solitary cell in Prague. On 30th November 1944, he was sent to a Leipzig court and sentenced to death for the treachery of the Bohmen und Mahren protectorate. Two weeks later he was sent to the Oflag IVc POW camp in Colditz awaiting his execution. He stayed in Colditz till its liberation by the US Army on 16th April 1945.
On 29th June 1945 he joined No. 313 RAF Squadron and having reunited with the Czechoslovakian army he was demobilized in 1947.
On 31st May 1948, he made an attempt to escape from communist Czechoslovakia into Germany. He was captured by border police and sentenced to eight years in jail. After a year in this jail, he escaped and with the support of the CIA he successfully crossed the border into the American Zone of Germany. Here he joined his wife Jiřina Tonderová who served in the RAF as a radio operator. She was brought out of Czechoslovakia separately in 1948. Two years later the CIA smuggled their two children out. They spent the rest of their lives in the United Kingdom.
Bertram Arthur "Jimmy" James, MC (17 April 1915 – 18 January 2008) was a British survivor of The Great Escape. He was an officer of the Royal Air Force, ultimately reaching (some years after the Great Escape) the rank of Squadron Leader.
James was initially commissioned as an acting pilot officer, and was promoted to pilot officer (on probation) on 9 December 1939. That rank was confirmed on 28 February 1941 (back-dated to 1 May 1940) when he was also promoted to war substantive flying officer with effect from 9 December 1940.
James was posted to No. 9 Squadron RAF at RAF Honington in April 1940 after completing his flying training.[2] He was a second pilot of a Wellington bomber when he was shot down over the Netherlands on 5 June 1940 and he was then taken prisoner.
Following initial interrogation, James and a small band of others were taken to Berlin and paraded through the capital. "It was a rather ghastly affair really. They weren't hostile, as the bombing hadn't really started, but we were rather curious to them, I suppose". From Berlin, James was moved to the notoriously bleak Stalag Luft I at Barth on the northern coast of Germany. The camp was still under construction at this stage of the war and the reality was that the Germans were only slowly coming to terms with POWs. Within a matter of days, Jimmy and W/Cdr John 'Death' Shore were planning an escape– the route was to be via the camp incinerator. Digging a high Criminal Police (Kripo) and taken to the Gestapo HQ in the town. Following a transfer to the local prison, Skantzikas was taken out to be shot, whilst James remained in his cell totally unaware of why he was saved from execution.
In Berlin, SS-Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe was ordered by Heinrich Müller, Chief of the Gestapo, to select and kill fifty of the seventy-three recaptured prisoners in what became known as the "Stalag Luft III murders". Fifty were then executed, James being one of a handful sent instead to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. On 23 September 1944, James escaped from Sachsenhausen, accompanied by Jack Churchill, Harry Day, Johnnie Dodge and Sydney Dowse using small cutlery knives to dig an escape tunnel over 110 metres long. On the run for several weeks, he was finally arrested in Pomerania before being transferred back to solitary confinement in Sachsenhausen. James's cell was tiny, just enough to stand up and stretch. For over four months Jimmy James suffered daily harassment from the guards, mock executions and, of course, virtually no food. As the Red Army was approaching, the SS decided to move the Prominenten prisoners further south, possibly to act as a bargaining chip with the Allies – though this has never been confirmed. Following a torturous journey via Dachau and Flossenbürg concentration camps, James and other Prominenten were moved to the South Tyrol where they were eventually liberated by partisans and US Army troops in May 1945
