page_title: Josef Bryks
section_title: Prisoner of war 1941–45
hierarchical_section_title: Josef Bryks / Second World War / Prisoner of war 1941–45
caption_attribution_description: English: Front view of Schloss Spangenberg, picture taken from the Melsunger Straße. Deutsch: Front-Ansicht von Schloss Spangenberg, aufgenommen von der Melsunger Straße.
context_page_description: Josef Bryks, MBE, was a Czechoslovak cavalryman and fighter pilot who escaped the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and became a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. He flew a Hawker Hurricane with No. 242 Squadron RAF until he was shot down over German-occupied France in 1941.
  Bryks was a prisoner of war for four years, in which time he escaped and was recaptured three times. After his third escape he served in the Polish Home Army in Warsaw, where he helped to get supplies to Jewish resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
  After his third recapture Bryks was moved to Stalag Luft III where he helped in The Great Escape, and then to Oflag IV-C in Colditz Castle, where he remained until it was liberated by the US Army in 1945. In 1948 the United Kingdom made Bryks an MBE for his escape attempts and for helping others to escape.
  In 1945 Bryks returned to Czechoslovakia and his Czechoslovak Air Force career. He was promoted to Major in 1946 but after the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état the Communists purged Bryks and many other officers who had served in Free Czechoslovak units under French or UK command.
context_section_description: Bryks landed safely and started to bury his parachute. Frenchmen who had seen him descend gave him a civilian coat to hide his RAF uniform and told him to come to a safe house in a nearby hamlet. Bryks hid in a barn until nightfall, then went to the hamlet where he asked at a house for a doctor to treat his burns. The occupants betrayed him by calling the Germans, but when Bryks heard their motorised patrol coming he fled the house and hid in a garden. The patrol caught him, beat him up and took him to St Omer.
  The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was subject to Nazi Germany, whose authorities deemed anyone from the Protectorate who served in Allied forces to be a traitor. He could therefore be executed and his family would suffer reprisals. Therefore, Bryks assumed the identity of "Joseph Ricks", born in 1918 in Cirencester, a Gloucestershire market town about 8 kilometres (5 miles) from where he had been spent two months at RAF Kemble.
  But when he was shot down Bryks was wearing the Mae West lifejacket of a Polish colleague from 242 Squadron, F/O Henry Skalsky. Therefore, the Germans who questioned him at St Omer suspected he was Polish, and sent him to Dulag Luft at Oberursel in Hesse for interrogation by a Polish-speaking German officer. There he was accused of shooting a Luftwaffe fighter pilot who was parachuting from his Bf 109 in the air battle near St Omer on 17 June. For this he was threatened with being court-martialled in Berlin. After the war no such shooting was found in German records for that day. The accusation seems to have been a false one to put pressure on Bryks.
  On 22 June Bryks was transferred from Dulag Luft to Oflag IX-A/H in Spangenberg castle in Hesse-Nassau. Here he advised the Senior British Officer (SBO), Maj Gen Victor Fortune, of his true identity. Fortune knew the threat to Czechoslovak pilots in captivity, and supported Bryks' assumed identity. And via the Red Cross Bryks, posing as "Joseph Ricks", started writing to Gertrude Dellar.
caption: Spangenberg castle in Hesse, where Bryks was held in Oflag IX-A/H from June to October 1941
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-HX1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2010:10:11 14:22:24", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "256", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 3, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Make": "SONY", "Thumbnail Model": "DSC-HX1", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail DateTime": "2010:10:11 14:22:24", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "10828", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "10893", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/800", "EXIF FNumber": "9/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Landscape Mode", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "125", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:10:11 14:22:24", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:10:11 14:22:24", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "553/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3456", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2592", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "10622", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Landscape", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}