A surprising number of inmates managed to sneak out of this prison.
When the Nazis gained power, the castle was converted into a political prison for communists and dissidents.
The Germans regarded Colditz Castle as a prison from which escape was impossible.
But herding all the troublemakers together in one place proved to be an embarrassing mistake.
This is what happened at Colditz: it developed its own culture of defiance.
Prisoners called them the home runs.
Most were recaptured, brought back to the prison and thrown into solitary confinement as punishment.
These escapees became a regular feature ofDas Abwehrblatt, a weekly magazine for German POW camps.
One of the most famous escapes was executed by British officer Airey Neave.
There, they exchanged their clothes with fake German uniforms and walked out of the front door.
They made it safely to Switzerland.
A failed escapee demonstrates for the prison photographer how he attempted to escape.
The shaft of an escape tunnel located below the chapel.
Photo:Johnny Saunderson
Another brazen escape was by a French aristocrat named Pierre Mairesse-Lebrun.
Leburn got an accomplice to catapult him over the fence when the guards were not looking.
He was recaptured a week later trying to stow aboard a Swedish ship in Danzig.
The tea chest used by Dominic Bruce to escape from Colditz.
Photo:Dominiclagan/Wikimedia
Tunneling was another favorite activity among the inmates.
One of the longest tunnels was dug by the French.
The tunnel was just 6 feet away from the edge of a cliff before they were discovered.
The tunnel had electric lighting along its whole length and ventilation system.
The glider was the brainchild of two British pilots, Jack Best and Bill Goldfinch.
Control wires were made from electrical wiring taken from unused portions of the castle.
The completed glider had a wingspan of 32 feet and fuselage of 19 feet.
It weighed 109 kg.
The only known photo of the original Coldlitz Glider.
There is even a Melbourne-based music band named Colditz Glider.
There is also a replica of the glider.
In 2012, a radio-controlled, full-sized replica of the Coldlitz glider was built and flown unmanned.
It made it safely across the river and landed in a meadow 180 meters below.
