The mystery of Hitler's secret labyrinth in Poland where 5000 workers died and no one knows why it was built
Over 80 years after World War II, in the southwest of Poland, in the owls of the owls, one of the most enigmatic and sinister military projects of the Nazi regime: Riese-in German translation, “Great”.
A visiting platform will be built for tourists in the ruins of the bunker no. 13/ Photo: X.
Designed as a vast network of bunkers, halls and tunnels dug in the rock, the underground complex would become, according to some testimonies, a possible secret neighborhood for Adolf Hitler. But what remained after this unfinished project is not only a fingerprint of the sick ambitions of the third Reich, but especially a necropolis of pain: over 5,000 prisoners, most Jews and Poles, found their end here, in inhuman conditions of forced work, writes The Sun.
The construction began in 1943, near the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, and the workers, mostly prisoners and prisoners of war, were brought to excavate entire kilometers of hard rock. In total, seven different complexes have been started, of which Osówka is today the most accessible to visitors. However, even today, many of the corridors dug in the mountains remain unexplored.
“What we see now is a huge abandoned site. Nothing has been completed from what had been initially planned,” Explains Zdzisław łazanowski, local guide and passionate researcher. With a confirmed network of over 8.5 kilometers of tunnels and numerous other collapsed or inaccessible areas, the mystery persists: what was this huge underground labyrinth?
Documents discovered after the war, including in the Archives of Prague, suggest that the project would have needed at least one year of hard work to be completed. Some rooms provided with generators, railways, dining rooms or a well intended for an industrial lift indicate a large infrastructure. In one of the halls, the concrete walls reach 10 meters high, and another strange monolith, embedded, contains dozens of pipes and channels without a clear function.
What was the giant to hide?
The assumptions are numerous: from armament factories protected by air raids, to a potential Wehrmacht control center or even the place where tests were performed for V1 and V2 missiles.
Some dreamers still believe in the legend of the “Nazi Golden Train” – a mysterious convoy loaded with valuables, hidden by the Germans in January 1945 to escape the Red Army. There were also recent notifications to the Polish authorities indicating the alleged train location, but none has been confirmed so far.
Another theory, at least as fascinating, makes the connection between these tunnels and the amber room – the famous treasure of imperial Russia, stolen by the Nazis and disappeared without a trace after 1941. It is speculated that it could have been hidden here, but to this day there is no conclusive evidence.
It is certain that Adolf Hitler never visited this place personally, but his architect, Albert Speer, inspected. Today, Osówka and the other sites remaining in the Riese project are open to the public, but also silent memorials for those who died here.
“We tell visitors that it is not just an abandoned construction. It is, in particular, a testimony of the cruelty and human sacrifice. We must talk not only about those who have planned this place, but also about those who have dug it with their hands, in torment and humility,“Adds łazanowski.
On May 8, 1945, on the day when the Soviet troops entered the owls of the owls, the Nazis had already abandoned the project. The Soviets did not use it, but they took with them everything they could transport: machines, generators, tools. In the silence that followed, only the rocks and the painful echo of history remained.
