Raid at St Lorenzen
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A total of 132 Allied prisoners of war were freed by Yugoslav Partisans in a single operation in August 1944 in what is known as the raid at St Lorenzen.
In June 1944 the Allied escape organisation began to take an active interest in assisting escapers from camps in southern Austria and evacuating them through Yugoslavia. A post of the Allied mission in northern Slovenia had found that at Sankt Lorenzen ob Eibiswald, just on the Austrian side of the border, about 30 miles from Maribor (German: Marburg-an-der-Drau), there was a poorly guarded working camp from which a raid by Slovene partisans could free all the prisoners. Over a hundred of the latter were transported from Stalag XVIII-D at Maribor to St. Lorenzen each morning to do railway maintenance work, and returned to their quarters in the evening. Contact was made between Partisans and the prisoners with the result that at the end of August a group of seven slipped away past a sleeping guard at three o'clock in the afternoon, and at nine o'clock the men were eating and dancing with Partisans in a village, five miles away on the Slovenian side of the border.
The seven escapers arranged with the Partisans for the rest of the camp to be freed the following day. Next morning the seven returned with some hundred Partisans to await the arrival of the work-party by the usual train. As soon as work had begun the partisans, to quote a New Zealand eye-witness, “swooped down the hillside and disarmed the eighteen guards”. In a short time prisoners, guards, and civilian overseers were being escorted along the route used by the first seven escapers the previous evening.
At the first headquarters camp reached, details were taken of the total of 132 escaped prisoners for transmission by radio to England. Progress along the evacuation route south was difficult, as German patrols were very active. A night ambush by one such patrol caused the loss of two prisoners and two of the escort. Eventually they reached Semič, in Bela Krajina, Slovenia, which was a Partisan base catering for escapers. They were flown across to Bari on 21 September 1944. [1] [2]
[edit] Walter Gossner's account of events
Walter Gossner, a private in the Australian army, provided an extremely detailed account of his experiences about being part of a group of 84 POWs freed by Partisans from a location close to St Lorenzen on 27 September 1944. He arrived at Semič 21 days later. It is likely that he described the Raid on St Lorenzen; why his dates differ so markedly from other accounts is unclear.[3]
