it was your duty to escape if you could.
Way back in 1944 Fritz, we used to call him, complete with grey clothes and Luftwaffe forage cap, would heave me on to the back of the farm horse and lead it around the field where I would watch him pitchforking hay into the cart. He lived in a room partitioned off in the barn with a tap and privy outside. Meals were taken with the rest of my Uncle's family.
He was there from 1943 to when they took him back in 1945. He wasn't the only one. There is a substantial number of Italian names in North East Scotland now as a result of Italian prisoners working the farms.
The Berlin Zoo had British POWs looking after the animals and there were many other examples of Allied POWs working in the agricultural sector.
Presumably all of them had undertaken(?) not to escape but how many saw this as a way to escape the dangers of war and the drudgery of a prisoner of war camp.