Zdzisław Nardelli

After the battle of Tomaszów Lubelski had been lost, Nardelli was captured in Bortniki near Żydaczów in the county of Lemberg on 18. September 1939 in the eastern area now known as West Ukraine. He made an unsuccessful attempt to escape with a cadet named Z. Nycz near Szepietówka in Podolia. Following an exchange of prisoners between the Nazi and the Soviet forces he was put on a transport to the west. On the 22. September he made another attempt to escape from a railway wagon near Görlitz, but this too was unsuccessful. He finally arrived with his comrades at the transit camp at Konin Żagański in the 8. Wehrmacht District of Lower Silesia. Following his registration in Stalag VIII C in Sagan, where he was to stay for some time, he was given the detainee number 4985. Here he spend his first winter in the war and slowly adapted to conditions in a prisoner-of-war camp. He began to work in the areas of education and art, and encouraged his comrades to do likewise. One result was a satirical nativity play presented there to mark the New Year in 1940 and entitled Uwaga! Sagan wrze! [Beware! Things are simmering in Sagan!]. The complete extant nativity play is one of the most valuable documentary relics left by Polish prisoners in the camps. The frequently biting couplets were written by Nardelli along with the painter, Tadeusz Łakomski, who was known for his loquacity and refreshing humour. Łakomski also worked on the set and the puppets with the painter, Jan Świderski. On the 20. May 1940 Nardelli and other Polish POWs were transferred to Stalag VIII A in Görlitz. One month before the capitulation of France the Germans began to set up special camps to accommodate the forthcoming wave of POWs from the west.

In June 1940 Stalag VIII A in Görlitz was completed by the first Polish prisoners to be captured on the battlefields: these included Czesław Mętrak from Warsaw. Just like the Polish POWs in Sagan, they were taken to a transit camp – in Görlitz – where they survived the winter 1939/40 in tents. The Poles greeted the first transports of French POWs as if they were hosts, with friendship and great interest because they were keen to learn the latest news from the West of what was happening in the world outside. They made every effort to reassure the new arrivals who had lived through the trauma of defeat and imprisonment. The Polish prisoners had already managed to get their own “Polish library” (“Polish” because until then only Poles were interned in the camp, although most of the stocks were in German) and set up a Roman Catholic chapel. On top of this they were constantly applying to set up a community room, a request that was continually rejected by the Germans on the grounds that Poland no longer existed as a state and for that reason Polish prisoners had no rights whatsoever.