Paweł Tobolski

Paweł "Peter" N. Tobolski (21 March 1906 – not before 2 April 1944) was a Polish airman who fought in World War II, murdered after the "Great Escape" from the Stalag Luft III prisoner of war camp.[1]

He was a navigator with the rank of flying officer in No. 301 Polish Bomber Squadron, an expatriate unit that fought as part of the Royal Air Force against Nazi Germany.[2] He took part in two combat missions. In his second mission, a thousand-bomber raid against Bremen at night of 25/26 June 1942, his bomber Vickers Wellington no. Z1479 GR-A (the squadron commander's) was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery near Dornumergrode; and he was captured and imprisoned in Stalag Luft III.[2] He was one of 76 men who took part in the "Great Escape" on 25 March 1944; an event memorialised in the 1950 book The Great Escape and in the 1963 film of the same name.

He was soon recaptured, in Stettin. He was one of the 50 escapees murdered by the Gestapo on the orders of Adolf Hitler. He is buried in Poznan Old Garrison Cemetery in Poland, in a British Commonwealth War Grave, next to others who had escaped with him and who had shared his fate.[3] His name is inscribed on the memorial to "The Fifty" near Żagań, Poland.

References
  1. "Stalag Luft III". Retrieved 20 April 2016.
  2. Hodyra, Piotr (2016). 301 Dywizjon Bombowy 1940-1943 (in Polish). Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza Alma-Press. pp. 71, 129. ISBN 978-83-7020-664-2.
  3. "Stower, John Gifford". Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Retrieved 19 April 2016.


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