Masters of the Air: The true story of the Zabikowo Camp

In the Masters of the Air finale, we see Rosie stumbling into Poland’s Zabikowo concentration camp in the final stretch of the war – here’s what you need to know.

Near the end of Band of Brothers, it delivered its biggest gut punch: the moment Easy Company discovered a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, packed with hundreds of starving people left abandoned among the corpses of their friends and family without any food or water.

It’s a sequence Masters of the Air clearly strives to evoke in Episode 9. Shortly after being downed over Berlin, Rosie is rescued by Russian forces and taken to the nearest airport to get him home. En route, they’re forced to stop while a wagon fixes its wheel, so he stretches his legs.

Seconds later, he realizes he’s walking through the archway of Zabikowo’s camp, and he’s soon confronted by unimaginable horrors.

Masters of the Air: Zabikowo Camp explained

Apple TV+

While it’s unclear if Robert Rosenthal saw the Zabikowo camp on his way back home, it was a real camp. It was first established as an extension to the Fort V11 camp in Posen, but its 750 prisoners were transferred to Zabikowo after it closed down in April 1944.

It held men, women, and children. “Poles, Russians, mainly Jews,” as the Soviet guard explains to Rosie in the finale.

“The prisoners were held in wooden barracks, some of which remained after the liquidation of a former forced labour camp for Jews, the Reichsautobahnlager Poggenburg, which was established during 1940, working on the construction of a motorway. The camp was designed mainly to hold Polish citizens, however Soviet Prisoners of War, and fugitives from forced labour. Also held captive were German deserters from the Wehrmacht, and civilians from a number of other countries,” the Holocaust Historical Society explains.

It’s believed at least 21,624 prisoners were held at Zabikowo, but most of its documentation was destroyed by the Germans before the end of the war, so that number isn’t necessarily accurate.

The camp began its evacuation on January 20, 1945, with more than 600 prisoners sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Others were shot and burned, while women were forced to march to the Ravensbruck camp, and they were killed if they couldn’t keep up with the pace. The camp was liberated on January 26, 1945, by Russian troops of the 2nd Byelorussian Front.

Masters of the Air Episodes 1-9 are streaming on Apple TV+ now. You can also check out our other coverage below:

Review | Premiere recap | Episode 3 recap | Episode 4 recap | Episode 5 recap | Episode 6 recap | Episode 7 recap | Episode 8 recap | Episode 9 recap | Ending explained | How accurate is it? | Release schedule: Dates & episodes | Cast and real-life characters | Filming locations | Is it a Band of Brothers sequel? | Soundtrack & songs | Is Barry Keoghan’s Curt dead? | Did Buck die? | What happened to Babyface? | What is a subaltern? | Was Sandra Wesgate a real person?