Charitable Purpose
The fundamental aims of the charity are to establish a site for a memorial to the Great Escape, to maintain that memorial for the benefit of current and future generations, to raise funds for the creation of a memorial monument and its subsequent maintenance, to keep alive for historical and educational benefit the story of the Great Escape and its achievements, to honour all the hundreds of prisoners of war who contributed to the breakout which is known as the Great Escape, to honour the 76 who actually made it to freedom, specifically the 3 who avoided recapture and got home, the 50 who were recaptured and summarily murdered by the Gestapo on Hitler’s direct orders and the 23 who were recaptured and survived.
Aims
Support
Support for the creation of a permanent memorial to the Great Escape is overwhelming.
The applicants behind the Great Escape Memorial Foundation (GEMF) charity application have
organised an event on the 82nd anniversary of the Great Escape at the RAF Club in London on 24 March 2026 and have managed to contact over 35 of the families of the Great Escapers of which more than 50 have already agreed to attend.
Without exception, all are hugely supportive of the initiative to establish a memorial in the UK.
The memorial would provide a symbol and place of reflection for present and future generations to remember what was achieved by those brave men who despite being in captivity and very closely surveilled day and night, managed to dig a tunnel over 335 feet long at a depth of 30 feet, excavate and dispose of over 100 tons of sand plus invent and build a fresh air ventilation system, an underground tracked rail system and steal or purloin enough wooden boards to shore up the roof and walls of the tunnel in extremely unstable soil.
All this was achieved without any proper tools or equipment, in itself a truly remarkable feat of engineering ingenuity.
The Memorial
The human cost of the Great Escape was enormous and the memorial will immortalise the memory of the 50 who were murdered by the Gestapo. However it will also immortalise its enduring legacy as a success in contributing to the downfall of the third Reich. Hundreds of thousands of German troops and internal security personnel were involved in the search for the escapers, their recapture, interrogation and punishment.
The embarrassment to the Nazi regime as a result of a successful breakout of prisoners on this scale was immense. A vast internal security investigation and punishment was undertaken further destabilising confidence in the regime and adding to the general atmosphere of repressive fear.
At the end of WW2 there was a move by the highest ranking officers within the RAF to get authorisation for a medal to be awarded to all the Great Escapers, living and deceased. That application was vetoed by King George VI who at that time stipulated that there would be no more medals for any actions that occurred during the war. This somewhat bizarre decision effectively denied the official recognition that should have been afforded to such an historic display of bravery and resistance against the enemy and as such, 82 years on it is another important factor that makes the creation of the memorial to the Great Escape so important as a way to record and recognise in perpetuity what took place.
To this day it remains an extraordinary testament to what can be achieved with virtually no resources and as such serves as a vital educational tool for both young people in a
motivational context and as a means to establish self confidence even though they might doubt their own abilities to achieve results and also for older, professional people who can find motivation from the Great Escape to achieve positive outcomes in a business environment where obstacles have to be overcome.
We are aware of the Great Escape already being used as an educational and motivational facet in both the above mentioned environments in schools and professional training courses, and the proposed charity seeks to encourage this.
An additional and important element that the charity will offer is as a repository of Great Escape documentary archives, accessible for educational users, academic researchers and historians.
Presently, the only other source of material on the Great Escape is housed at the POW’s Camp Museum at the site of the Stalag Luft 3 prison in Zagan, Poland which whilst being a very valued source for researchers, is far from being easily accessible and is dependent on private donations and very limited funding from the Polish state.
The establishment of the GEMF charity will both allow teachers, students and researchers from all over the world to more readily access material and to have a point of focus in the physical form of the memorial itself in the UK.
It is worth emphasising that the POW’s Camp Museum is fully supportive of the project to establish a UK memorial for the Great Escape through the proposed new GEMF charity. There has been close cooperation with the Polish organisation since 2024 which marked the 80th anniversary of the Great Escape and saw the Polish armed forces expand their annualremembrance of the escape to impressive levels with wreath laying at the Commonwealth Cemetery in Poznan followed by a memorial display at the camp in Zagan with massed ranks of soldiers and a flypast by F16 fighter jets of the Polish Airforce.
Regrettably, no memorials were held in the UK on this landmark anniversary. Perhaps the lack of any specific memorial to the Great Escape in this country contributed to this oversight, something which will not occur again when the UK memorial site is established.
Associations / Partners