Great Escape: WW2 soldiers who took part in daring plan remembered on 80th anniversary

The Great Escape was an ingenious act of defiance in which 76 prisoners of war tunneled out of a German labour camp - Stalag Luft III - into a snowy forest.

Soldiers belonging to Poland's 11th Armoured Cavalry Division as well as American troops stationed there attended the event, according to Polish state broadcaster TVP World. Most of the soldiers who escaped from Stalag Luft III on the night of March 24, 1944, faced a tragic end. Only three made it to safety, while the others were recaptured and 50 of them executed.More recently, a new exhibition was opened in the UK at the National Archives, in London, which pays tribute to the escapees.

Adolf Hitler was so incensed by the escape that he ordered the 73 recaptured men executed, with the Nazis eventually killing 50 - all in violation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of war prisoners.

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