Expedition to Nazi tunnels inside dormant volcano in Poland seeks to find lost Gestapo file

A group of explorers in Poland want to make history with a mission in which they seek to penetrate a network of tunnels built by the Nazis during WWII inside an ancient volcano in Lower Silesia. They believe the lost Cracow Gestapo archives are hidden there.

To achieve this goal, they founded the Association of Lovers of Upper Lusatia with which they collect funds to finance the mission.

Their adventure, which looks like a James Bond movie, began when one of its members fell in 2011 in a local archive in the city of Lubán with a plan that describes the volcanic tunnels of the Nazis.

Since then, several attempts have been made to explore the tunnels with expeditions which have revealed several wells descending into the dormant volcano.

The tunnels dug in the basalt rock during World War II have not been visited for 76 years. In 1945, the Germans blew up certain corridors and bury the entrances.

However, they did so with care so that they could reinstate in the future.

This raised the hope that this section of the complex It is used to store valuables and this is where the group plans to enter on their last exploration.

The possible existence of the Cracow Gestapo archives in Lower Silesia comes from testimonies of SS member Obersturmführer Kurt Heinemeyer, who was a Gestapo officer in Krakow from January 1940 to January 18, 1945.

Believed to contain many Nazi secrets, including wartime traitors, the file has been described as “An invaluable source of information on the dark days of the occupation of WWII.”

From 1943 until the end of the war, Heinemeyer was at the head of a section which fought against the Polish left organizations. In 1947, the Allies handed him over to Poland to stand trial for war crimes. Heinemeyer wanted to cooperate with the Polish authorities.

During the interrogation of the Security Bureau in Krakow, Heinemayer testified that the Gestapo documents were brought by order of Hans Frank, the governor of occupied Poland, to the Lower Silesian town of Rothwasser, now Czerwona Woda, and partially destroyed in a brickyard there .

However, Sebastian Terenda of the exploration group believes that it is possible that some of the documents ended up in Lubań, located just 18 kilometers from Czerwona Woda, and were hidden under the volcano Kamienna Góra.

“Why would they have driven from Krakow to Czerwona Woda to burn the archives?” “Terenda said during a conversation with Polish outlet The First News.

“They left the metal rings in the archives for you to find.” Maybe it was a distraction to make people think the whole file had been burnt. “added.

In 1945, the Germans were on the verge of collapse, but not all forces were deployed to defend Berlin.

Although the surrounding towns quickly came under pressure from the Red Army, the Germans defended Lubań with great fervor.

Terenda thinks it could have been to save time to bury something nearby and that the tunnel complex would have made an excellent storage site.

“In the sketch it is marked as a bomb shelter, but the tunnels are 3 by 3 meters and the bomb shelters are typically 1.6 by 1.8 meters. Its height and width make it excellent for storage ”, he claimed.

The Nazis built many tunnel complexes in the mountains of Lower Silesia, including the Reise project in Wałbrzych. However, the Kamienna Góra complex is the only known case of Nazi construction inside a volcano.

One section of the tunnels does not have access to others around and this is where Terenda thinks the Nazis may have been hiding valuable items.

“It’s only accessible from one of the four entrances, so it looks like they planned it as a storage area.”, He said.

The original purpose of the tunnel network is also a mystery. “Basalt is one of the hardest stones. Why did they go to so much trouble to drill tunnels in such a tough material? ” asks the explorer.

One theory is that the Germans wanted to house a radar equipment factory that existed in the city.

The group of history buffs now plans to drill through the 30-meter-deep landslide. This is tricky because the basalt rock is hard and the Germans may have mined the basement before blowing up the entrances.

To reveal the secrets of the tunnel, the group needs 200,000 zloty ($ 52,787). Half of that was donated by mining giant KGHM. Of the remaining half, only 20,000 zloty ($ 5,278) remains to be raised.

The group is convinced that it will do so quickly and that it will be able to start entering the site in early July.

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