The Rolex Oyster watch, which belonged to a British Air Force pilot and which served to organize the “Great Escape” of the prisoners at the Nazi camp Stalug Luft III and was immortalized in the cinema, sold for US$189,000 (approximately R$927,000) on Thursday. ) An anonymous buyer at an auction in New York.
The price paid for the one-story piece is lower than estimated by Christie’s auction house, which hopes to sell it for between 200,000 and 400,000 euros.
Purchased by pilot Gerald Imeson while he was a Nazi POW in 1943, watch ref. Manufactured in the early 1940s, 3525 is one of the first blue-screened and water-resistant stainless steels.
Imeson ordered the watch from the Rolex house in Switzerland and sent it via the Red Cross to a maximum security prison camp near the present-day town of Sagan in then German territory Poland.
Christie’s watch expert Adam Victor told AFP that Imeson’s watch was crucial to timing during the preparation and planning of the “Great Escape,” of the prisoners of war immortalized by the movie that made Steve McQueen famous in the 1960s.
Of the 200 prisoners who participated in the preparations, 76 managed to escape from the Nazi maximum security camp on March 24, 1944. Imeson was not among them. Most were captured and 50 were executed.
The watch remained on the pilot’s wrist until the end of the war – it was released in 1945 – and held it until his death. His family put it up for auction in the UK in 2013.
source: Noticias
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