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20-608: The camp, located just south of Prenzlau on the main road to Berlin, and was originally built in 1936 as a barracks for Artillery Regiment 38. It was opened as a POW camp in September 1939 and housed mainly Belgian and Polish officers. With an area of about 7 hectares (17 acres) the camp was divided into two compounds: Lager A which contained four three-storey prisoner blocks, and an administration and canteen block, and Lager B which contained various garages and workshops, some of which were used as additional prisoner accommodation. The camp

40-569: A long history of combatting censorship of oppressive regimes in Poland . It existed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, including under foreign occupation of the country, as well as during the totalitarian rule of the pro-Soviet government. Throughout the Eastern Bloc , bibuła published until the collapse of communism was known also as samizdat ( see below ). In the 19th century in partitioned Poland , many underground newspapers appeared; among

60-427: A number of officers arranged a fight outside one of the huts. While the guards were engaged in breaking up the fight, toward which the searchlights were all directed, three officers managed to cut through the barbed wire and escape from the camp. A larger scale attempt was unsuccessful. In 1943 a tunnel was being dug from a hut closest to the wires. About 150 officers were preparing to get out through it. Unfortunately, as

80-511: A symphony orchestra under the direction of Józef Klonowski. In 1942 a secret radio receiver was built and the news distributed throughout the camp in newsletters. Units of the Polish Home Army from Piła and Krzyż secretly maintained contact with the POWs and the former smuggled Polish underground press into the camp. Thirteen pre-war Polish Olympics competitors were held in the camp. In

100-792: The Polish People's Republic during the 1970s and 1980s, several books (sometimes as long as 500 pages) were printed in quantities often exceeding 5,000 copies. In 1980 and 1981, during the short legal existence of Solidarity trade union , actual newspapers were also published. Most of the Polish underground press was organized in the 1970s by the Movement for Defense of Human and Civic Rights (ROPCiO) and Workers' Defence Committee (KOR). Over several years, alongside hundreds of small individual publishers, several large underground publishing houses were created, fueled by supplies smuggled from abroad or stolen from

120-494: The Soviet Red Army . The exception was a group of sick officers evacuated to Oflag II-A , which they reached on 17 March 1945. They were liberated there along with fellow sick Belgian officers on 27 April 1945. There were several escape attempts, but only two were successful. In early 1942 three officers managed to hide inside empty boxes in a truck that was unloading food supplies. They were successful. On Christmas Eve 1942

140-403: The architect Professor Jerzy Hryniewiecki. A number of the prisoners were able to complete full university courses which were recognized after the war. In the theater a number of plays were presented by two professional directors - Kazimierz Rudzki and Jan Kocher. Some new plays were written, including a three-act drama called Mały ("The Little One") written by Andrzej Nowicki . There was also

160-442: The backrooms of official publishing houses. Throughout the communist era, Poland's Catholic Church and some Christian organizations and groups were allowed to publish a number of periodicals with a certain amount of freedom and a more or less clear anti-communist stand in various periods - but censored. The weekly Tygodnik Powszechny , half openly supporting KOR since 1976 and Solidarity since 1980, and monthly Więż were among

180-683: The black market. Books were sold through underground distribution channels to paying customers, including subscribers. Among the few hundred regional periodicals with a usual hand-to-hand circulation of 2,000-5,000, the countrywide "Tygodnik Mazowsze" weekly reached an average circulation of 60,000 - 80,000 copies, while some issues topped 100,000. The estimated production of books and thick journals can be put close to one thousand per year and more than one million copies. Other products on this market included audio cassettes, videocassettes, posters, postcards, calendars, stamps and buttons. As an indication of how many Poles had access to underground publications in

200-528: The camp began in October 1939 when 500 Polish prisoners from the September campaign arrived to build the camp, and who lived initially in tents. In May 1940 as the building work progressed small groups of Polish officers were transferred in from other POW camps. In July 1941 a group of officer-cadets ( podchorąży ) were brought from Stalag II-A . They were divided among the 25 huts to work as orderlies, in addition to

220-694: The entire country. After the Revolutions of 1989 some of the underground publishers in Poland transformed into regular and legal publishing houses. There were important differences of scale between Polish underground publishing and the samizdats of the Soviet Union, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and other countries in the Soviet Bloc . In the 1980s, at any given time there were around one hundred independent publishers in Poland who formed an exceptionally vibrant segment of

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240-563: The government grants of printing paper, which limited the number of copies. Semi-legal news bulletins were printed by Solidarity and other opposition groups in almost every town, on paper sent as an aid by some Scandinavian and Western-European trade unions, without the regime's consent, but for the time being rarely prosecuted. All that ended December 13, 1981, when General Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law and banned Solidarity. The Polish underground press drew on experiences of Second World War veterans of Armia Krajowa and much attention

260-474: The lower ranks that were already doing this work. In April 1942 the last group of Polish officers arrived from Oflag X-C near Lübeck . The number of inmates reached its peak of 5,944 officers and 796 orderlies. In October 1944 a small number of higher-ranking officers arrived from the Warsaw Uprising . On 28 January 1945 the POWs were assembled and marched westward, but after two days they were liberated by

280-779: The most popular. A news-sheet Solidarność , printed in the Gdansk shipyard during the August 1980 strike , reached a print run of 30,000 copies daily. The communist regime then allowed for two legal periodics to be published under the government control and censorship, yet with a significant margin of freedom: in January 1981, a regional weekly Jedność in Szczecin, and in May the nationwide weekly Tygodnik Solidarność with Tadeusz Mazowiecki as chief editor and circulation of 500,000. Both newspapers were dependent on

300-634: The most prominent was the Robotnik , published in over 1,000 copies from 1894. In the Second World War , in occupied Poland there were thousands of underground publications by the Polish Secret State and the Polish resistance . The Tajne Wojskowe Zakłady Wydawnicze (Secret Military Printing Works) was probably the largest underground publisher in the world. The Home Army Biuletyn Informacyjny reached an estimated circulation of 47,000. In

320-514: The summer of 1944 the prisoners were granted permission to stage an unofficial POW Olympics from July 23 to August 13. An Olympic Flag was made with a bed sheet, and pieces of colored scarves was raised. Polish underground press Polish underground press , devoted to prohibited materials ( sl. Polish : bibuła [biˈbu.wa] , lit. semitransparent blotting paper or, alternatively, Polish : drugi obieg [ˈdru.ɡi ˈɔ.bjɛk] , lit. second circulation), has

340-400: The tunnel was within a few metres of its end it was discovered. In 1945, Wojciech Trojanowski escaped during the evacuation of the camp. Cultural life in the camp was very extensive. A large number of classes were conducted by the 80 officers who were professors or teachers in civilian life. These classes included philosophy and law, as well as French and English. Mathematics was taught by

360-399: Was a German World War II prisoner-of-war camp located about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) from the town of Woldenberg, Brandenburg (now Dobiegniew , western Poland ). The camp housed Polish officers and orderlies and had an area of 25 hectares (62 acres) with 25 brick huts for prisoners and another six for kitchens, class-rooms, theater, and administration. Now it houses a museum. Work on

380-414: Was paid to conspiracy; however, after martial law in Poland and the government crackdown on Solidarity , the activities of underground publishing were significantly curtailed for several years. Nevertheless, with the communist government losing power in the second half of the 1980s, production of Polish underground printing ( bibuła ) dramatically increased, and many publications were distributed throughout

400-519: Was surrounded by a double barbed-wire fence with seven watchtowers. On 17 March 1945, a group of evacuated sick Polish officers from the Oflag II-C camp reached Oflag II-A. On 12 April 1945 two bombs dropped by a Russian aircraft hit Block B killing eight POWs, and injuring several others. The camp was liberated by the Red Army on the morning of 28 April 1945. Oflag II-C Oflag II-C Woldenburg

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