Human Game: The True Story of the 'Great Escape' Murders and the Hunt for the Gestapo Gunmen

by Read, Simon

  From the physical description, Bowes and Lyon knew Kiowsky meant Kirby-Green.

  “As I was curious, I looked into the room and saw that the handcuffs were being taken off the flier,” Kiowsky said. “It was at this moment Ziegler entered the room.”

  Ziegler watched as a guard struggled to remove one of the cuffs from Kirby-Green’s wrist. When it appeared the cuff wouldn’t unlock, Ziegler stepped forward and tore the cuff away, pulling it hard over skin and bone. He turned to the interpreter and said, “Tell him in English that when vagabonds are encountered on the streets, they will be treated like vagabonds.”

  Kiowsky left the room and returned to the driver’s quarters to await further instructions.

  “I received the order to depart about midnight,” he said. “This order was given by Ziegler personally. I asked Ziegler before our departure what we would do about petrol, as I did not have [enough] to get to Breslau. Ziegler replied, ‘You will not have to drive to Breslau.’ Although I said nothing to Ziegler, I got the impression the two fliers would not reach Breslau alive.”

  The prisoners, once again manacled at the wrists, were brought down to the garage and put in two separate cars. Kirby Green rode with Knuppelberg, the Gestapo official from Brno; Kidder traveled with Zacharias and Kiowsky. Guiding his car on the darkened street heading out of town, Kiowsky asked his companion what was to become of the airmen. Zacharias said nothing and simply gave a thumbs-down sign.

  “I knew for the first time,” Kiowsky said, “the two were going to be shot.”

  Outside of Zlín, he turned the Mercedes onto a country road that ran between the towns of Friedeck and Moravska Ostrava. Knuppelberg’s car followed close behind. Zacharias stared out the window in search of an ideal spot and found one at a point where the side of the road fell away into a drainage ditch. He ordered Kiowsky to pull over onto the grassy shoulder. In his side-view mirror, all Kiowsky could see of the other vehicle was the sharp glare of its headlights. Next to him, Zacharias, one hand buried in a coat pocket, opened the door and got out of the car.

  “I knew that he was carrying a gun,” Kiowsky told his interrogators. “I had seen him load it in Zlín and put it in his pocket. He told the officer to get out and relieve himself. The officer was still handcuffed.”

  The driver from the second vehicle— Schwarzer—now approached Kiowsky’s car, leaned through the window, and asked for a smoke.

  “I gave him a cigarette, and at the precise moment when we were lighting the cigarettes, two shots were fired almost simultaneously: one by my car and the other by the second car. I immediately turned to see what was happening. I saw the officer collapsing on the roadside, to the left and slightly to the front of Zacharias. At the same moment as I saw this officer collapsing, Zacharias fired a second shot,” Kiowsky said. “At the time, this officer was handcuffed with his hands in front of him. The officer fell into the ditch. I immediately got out of the car and saw that the second officer was also lying in the ditch. The Brno official came to Zacharias and told him to take the handcuffs off the officers, so that no one would notice the two officers were manacled. I saw nothing that gave me the impression that the officers had wished to escape or made an attempt. I stood by the ditch and saw the two bodies lying there. There was a lot of blood on the snow, but I saw no wound on the bodies. Zacharias told me—without my asking him—that his first shot was in the back and the second in the head as he was collapsing.”

  Knuppelberg ordered Kiowsky and Zacharias to remain with the bodies while he drove to Moravska Ostrava to notify authorities. He returned about two hours later with a police van in tow. In the van, Kiowsky made out one man behind the wheel and another, wearing “the dark uniform of the Czech police,” in the passenger seat. The two men got out of the van and loaded the bodies into the back. Knuppelberg assured Zacharias all would be taken care of and asked him to relay the news to Ziegler. Once back in Zlín, Zacharias did as instructed and reported, “Herr Kriminalrat, everything has passed off smoothly. The bodies have been taken to the crematorium in Moravska Ostrava and a doctor will be there to make an examination.”

  “What happened next?” asked Lyon.

  “Ziegler then gave us the strictest instructions to discuss this occurrence with no one.”

  About one month later, Kiowsky and the others involved returned to the scene of the crime on Ziegler’s orders to coordinate their stories, thus ensuring everyone had his “facts” straight. Otto Kozlowsky, a Gestapo lawyer with the Brno office, accompanied them to the killing field and helped orchestrate their stories down to the smallest detail.

  “He showed us a plan of the scene that was completely at variance with the actual facts of the case,” Kiowsky said. “He explained that it was possible that someone might come from the International Red Cross to investigate the matter, and instructed us as to what we should say.”

  “And what were you supposed to say?” Bowes asked.

  “If asked, that the two fliers had tried to escape whilst relieving themselves and were shot in the fields at a distance of twenty to thirty meters.”

  Done for now with Kiowsky, Bowes and Lyon questioned other Gestapo men held in the town. A man named Urbanek—captured in September 1945—said he and Erich Zacharias had both been issued papers by the American military stating they were “harmless persons and ex-customs officials.” Together, they found work on a farm in the Mittenwald region of Bavaria. Zacharias soon moved on, Urbanek said, and was now with family in Wesermünde. Urbanek gave the RAF men what he believed to be the addresses of Zacharias’s parents and brother. The wanted man’s wife, who, by sheer luck, happened to live locally, could confirm the information. She invited Bowes and Lyon into her home and offered them a seat. An electric fire cast a pallid, flickering glow on the worn carpet but did little to heat the room. A young boy materialized from the hallway to check out the visitors and, just as quickly, scurried from the room. Through Lyon, Bowes stated the purpose of their visit. It soon became apparent that whatever feelings Frau Zacharias once had for her husband had died long ago. He was an ardent Nazi, but she had never taken up the cause. He had abandoned the family in April 1945 to escape the advancing Russians. Yes, she said, answering a question put by Bowes, he had family in Wesermünde at the addresses provided by Urbanek. With any luck, they could find him there.

  On the morning of February 23, Bowes and Lyon traveled to Zlín and toured the building formerly used by the Gestapo as its regional headquarters. The place had been cleared of all relevant files near the end of the war. In the cellar, they inspected the squalid cells in which Kirby-Green and Kidder were imprisoned prior to their execution. They were dark, cramped spaces of stagnant air and, like the cells they’d seen in Pankratz, not adequately large enough to accommodate a full-grown man. The Zlín authorities made available for questioning a onetime clerk in the building, who recalled seeing the prisoners shortly after their arrest. One of them, he said, spoke excellent German.

  “I spoke to both the officers in English,” the clerk said. “The captain was a Canadian. He told me he studied languages at Quebec University and was shot down in Flanders in 1941. He said he improved his knowledge of German during his captivity. He was dressed in grey civilian clothes and told me he was not married. The major was about six feet tall, well-built, and told me he lived in England. He told me he was married and had one child. I was with them about half an hour and, as I was leaving, I saw them being put into the small cells at the end of the corridor.”

  Both Ziegler and Zacharias, said the clerk, were present when the airmen were interrogated. At the local civil police station, Bowes examined the Prisoners’ Record Book. An entry dated 28.3.44 showed Kirby-Green and Kidder had been taken into custody at eleven that morning and turned over to the Gestapo at eleven that night. Bowes turned away from the book, satisfied with the progress being made. Now he wanted to see the actual crime scene. Kiowsky was temporarily released into the RAF’s custody and directed Bowes and Lyon to the kill
ing field. The men traveled by jeep, passing through Moravska Ostrava and continuing several miles south on the road to Frydek before Kiowsky told them to stop. Bowes pulled the jeep over. The RAF men got out and surveyed the landscape.

  Members of the Royal Air Force Special Investigating Branch reconstruct the shooting deaths of Squadron Leader Thomas Kirby-Green and Flying Officer Gordon Kidder.

  BRITISH NATIONAL ARCHIVES: WO 309/1369

  “It’s open country,” Bowes said, “which gives no possible cover to anyone attempting to escape.”

  Kiowsky led Bowes and Lyon to a nearby ditch, the ground sodden and muddy underfoot. It was here, he said, the officers fell when shot. Lyon snapped pictures of everything. As the camera bulbs flashed, Kiowsky mimicked the positions of Kirby-Green and Kidder before and after the execution. In the car for the return journey, Bowes and Lyon silently pondered the fate of their fellow airmen. They stopped in Moravska Ostrava, where inquiries led them to a policeman who, on orders from the Gestapo, had transported the bodies to the local crematorium. The officer said he arrived at the scene in the early morning hours, sometime between five and six. When he got out of his car, he saw two Gestapo agents pulling the victims from a ditch alongside the road. “The body of the first man was stronger and bigger,” the officer said. “When this body was being put in to the car, I noticed a wound on the right side of the face directly in front of the ear. The area around it was strongly burnt and proved beyond any doubt that the man was shot from close range. I noticed no wounds on the body of the second man. I saw only blood flowing from the nose, mouth, and one ear.”

  The bodies loaded in the backseat of his car, the officer followed the Gestapo agents to the crematorium in Moravaska Ostrava. “The two Gestapo men took the bodies into the crematorium, and I drove off to the police station,” he said. “Before I left, I was ordered by one of the Gestapo officials not to talk about this case whatsoever.”

  Frantisek Krupa, the crematorium attendant, was still on the job.

  Krupa said he arrived at the crematorium on the morning in question to find three Gestapo agents waiting outside. On the ground were two bodies, which they dragged into the mortuary. Krupa watched as the agents patted down the corpses and removed watches, rings, and other personal effects. When done, they sealed the door to the mortuary and told Krupa that no one was to enter. Not until nine-thirty the following morning, March 30, were the bodies destroyed. “The Gestapo men came with two other men,” Krupa said, “and I was ordered to cremate the bodies in succession without coffins. They were cremated in their suits.”

  As the bodies were loaded into the incinerator, Krupa made a mental note of the physical injuries evident on each: a gunshot wound was visible in front of the ear of one man and behind the ear of the other. The ashes of the two dead men were placed in separate urns, numbered 6385 and 6386. The next day, a Gestapo agent turned up at the crematorium and took possession of the urns. “I don’t know where the urns were taken,” Krupa said. “I made a notice in the crematorium book of cremations, showing the urns had been sent to the family. This meant the urns had been taken away by the Gestapo.”

  On February 28, with multiple corroborating statements implicating Zacharias, Ziegler, and Knuppelberg in the Zlín murders, Bowes and Lyon returned to Prague. From a local war crimes investigator, they learned that a Czech state policeman had seen Ziegler and Kozlowsky at a hotel in Zell Am See, Austria, no more than two weeks ago. Although it was impossible to substantiate the sighting, Bowes deemed it worthy of immediate attention. His plan was to travel to Weisbaden, where McKenna was currently working his end of the investigation. There, he would personally hand over the information acquired on Zacharias and task McKenna with the man’s apprehension. The weather, however, had turned foul in recent days and grounded flights out of Prague. Desperate, Bowes and Lyon hitched a cold and bumpy ride with a U.S. Army transport truck bound for Schweinfurt Airfield. They sat in the cab, alongside the driver, wrapped in coats and struggling to keep warm. The journey lasted well into the night; the later the hour, the greater their discomfort. At the airfield they caught a ride, equally rough, on another truck, heading for Weisbaden. They reached the city aching and exhausted. McKenna met them on arrival and was debriefed on Zacharias. There was little time to socialize. After a night spent in a local hotel, Bowes and Lyon traveled on to their final destination. In Zell Am See, Bowes made contact with the U.S. Military Government and coordinated the raid on the Landhaus Brichta hotel.

  A sliver of moon cast watery silver light on the bare tree branches and thin covering of freshly fallen snow as the jeep followed the winding country lane that led to the Landhaus Brichta. With Lyon behind the wheel, Bowes sat in the passenger seat and watched the bleak scenery scroll past his window. A U.S. Army truck with a contingent of armed men followed in the jeep’s wake. The two vehicles reached the crest of a hill and rounded a bend, dimming their headlights in the process. The hotel windows were dark. The jeep and the army truck came to a stop several yards down the road. Men, gripping sidearms and rifles, jumped out of the vehicles and moved quickly toward the hotel, skirting the sides of the road. The Landhaus Brichta was a typical Alpine structure, with a sharp-angled roof and colorful flower boxes, now barren, beneath the shuttered windows. The frigid night air stung Bowes’s eyes and burned his lungs as he closed in on the building. He and Lyon, along with two armed officers, made their way to the hotel’s back entrance. The American soldiers, rifles at the ready, covered the hotel’s front and sides.

  Bowes and his team took up position behind a row of foliage and studied the building’s façade. All appeared silent and still. Bowes squinted at his watch: the top of the hour was minutes away. Since Czechoslovakia, he had thought many times of Thomas Kirby-Green and Gordon Kidder, falling in a sodden field and lying in muck. He glanced at his watch again, impatient to get the job done. At 0100 hours, the Americans took the hotel from the front. A violent banging on the door announced their arrival, startling the sleeping guests and dispelling the darkness. The place sprang to life with noise and light. Bowes and his men rushed across a patch of frozen lawn and entered through the back door. Guests who tried to flee their rooms were ordered back inside. It took several minutes to restore some level of peace and order. A bewildered Frau Brichta, in her nightgown, pleaded to know what was happening. Bowes showed his identification and stated his business. The woman seemed incredulous. “No Gestapo from Brno, or anywhere else,” she said, “has stayed here since the capitulation!”

  A room-to-room search of the premises turned up nothing. Guests were questioned and the hotel registry examined, without results. That afternoon, Bowes interrogated Herr Brichta at the CIC in Salzburg. He admitted local Gestapo officials had once stayed at a hotel he owned in Brno. “They bled me white,” he said. “They had food and drink for which they offered nothing in return. They said that if events ever went wrong, they would come and stay at my hotel in Zell Am See, but they never did.” Bowes left the camp disappointed. Although he had found the Brichtas to be “undesirable types,” he could see no reason for them to lie. “With regard to the question of harbouring Gestapo officials, they were telling the truth,” he cabled London. “I consider it extremely probable that should Brichta get an opportunity of cutting of their throats, he would do so.”

  Two days later, on March 11, McKenna—accompanied by Dutch translator Lieutenant Colonel Vreugdenhil—arrived in the American-held port of Bremen. He met that morning with officials from the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps and presented what information he had on Erich Zacharias. Records showed that a German national by that name currently worked as a clerk at the No. 256 U.S. Army Refrigeration Plant on the city’s main dock. McKenna moved quickly. Through the U.S. Army’s regional public safety officer, Lieutenant Freshour, he arranged a military police escort and descended on the docks that afternoon. The men, armed with automatics and mug shots of the wanted man, dispersed and went in search of their prey. It was 2:14 P.M. when McKe
nna, standing outside the refrigeration plant, saw Zacharias heading in his direction. McKenna approached the man; Vreugdenhil and Freshour drew their Colt .45s and covered Zacharias from behind.

  “My name is Frank McKenna,” he said, as he drew closer. “I’m an officer with the Royal Air Force investigating the murders of fifty British airmen from Stalag Luft III. Show me your papers.”

  The man fumbled inside his jacket and produced an American-issued identity card in the name of Erich Zacharias. Because the Americans had classified him as “harmless,” he’d had no reason to assume a false identity. McKenna pocketed the card and took the man by the arm. McKenna drove Zacharias to the CIC at Wesermünde. The prisoner was stripped and searched for poisons before being moved under armed guard to the American-run prison in Karlsburg. Later that day, McKenna sought permission from U.S. authorities to transfer Zacharias to the War Criminals Holding Centre in British-controlled Minden. Approval, he was told, would have to come from U.S. forces headquarters in Frankfurt Am Main and would take several days. Determined not to lose the RAF’s first major catch to the Americans, McKenna settled into a cheap hotel and waited.

  He did not have to wait long: the necessary clearances came through the following day. He reported that afternoon to Freshour, who met him with a grim expression and news that Zacharias had escaped. As guards walked him to an army truck parked in the prison courtyard, Zacharias broke free and ran through the open prison gates. He put the truck between himself and the guards, who raised their rifles to fire, and disappeared into the nearby wreckage of a bombed-out building. McKenna phoned Bowes in Rinteln, who voiced his displeasure in the bluntest terms. There was nothing McKenna could do but lend whatever assistance the Americans might need. McKenna returned to Rinteln to let the manhunt run its course, but he held out little hope of success. A break came some weeks later when investigators, monitoring the mail services, intercepted a letter addressed to a friend of Zacharias. “Erich has been ill,” it read, “and will soon be on his way.” The return address was a house in Fallersleben, in the province of Brunswick, mere miles from the Russian Zone of Occupation. American soldiers stormed the house at one o’clock on the morning of March 31 and found Zacharias packing for a long trip. McKenna traveled to Wesermünde on April 2, took Zacharias into custody, and conveyed him to the British holding facility in Minden. A strip search revealed in his possession a silver wristwatch of the kind worn by British aircrews.