Christie’s, the largest auction house in the world, has sold this Thursday the 9th a Rolex brand watch owned by Gerald Imerson, a British lieutenant in the Royal Air Force, a participant in the most notorious escape in contemporary history. On the night of March 24-25, 1944, 76 of the 200 prisoners escaped from the Stalag Luft III concentration camp in Zagan, Poland, reserved for detainees of the allied air forces. An escape planned for more than three months, which consisted of the construction of three tunnels of more than 100 meters in length to cross the high fences that separated the prisoners from their longed for freedom. Mainly known for the John Sturges film The Great Escape, the escape was not successful, since only 3 of the 76 escapees managed to cross the borders of Allied territories. The rest were captured and executed on the orders of Adolf Hitler.
The watch has been sold for $189,000, although Christie’s expected a collection between $200,000 and $400,000. It is a Rolex 3525 model ‘Monoblocco’. It was specifically designed for officers and soldiers, allowing them to calculate time with extreme precision thanks to the watch’s timing functions. The 3525 went out of business after World War II. Since then, it has been known as ‘POW’, Prisoner or War -prisoner of war-, in honor of the soldiers who carried it. It is a model highly valued by collectors and experts.
According to Christie’s, Gerald Imerson had bought the watch in Switzerland, and then sent it through the Red Cross to the concentration camp where he was. A steel watch equipped with a dial and luminescent hands, which would have been “decisive in the planning and execution of the escape plan”, as explained by the auction house. Christie’s has added that the watch would have been purchased to calculate the time needed to cross the tunnels, and time German surveillance patrols. Imerson was wearing the watch during the escape attempt, but was unable to escape. He was released in 1945 and carried the piece until his death in 2003, at the age of 85. It was also worn by Steve McQueen during the filming of The Great Escape.
