We were on a trip to Complex Rzeczka – underground corridors, part of a construction project Riese (Giant)

started by Nazi Germany in 1943-1945 in the Owl Mountains and Książ Castle in Lower Silesia, previously Germany,

now territory of Poland.

The entrance to the Museum

Underground

Some tools left by Germans

Watching the huge corridors

Project Riese

• In the presence of the increasing Allied air raids Nazi Germany moved a large part of its strategic armaments production into the assumed safety of the District of Sudetenland. In September 1943 a project was created to construct Hitler's headquarters in Książ Castle and underground factories below the Owl Mountains.

• According to incomplete data, at least 13,000 prisoners worked for the project „Riese”, most of them transferred from Auschwitz concentration camp. The documents allow the identification of 8,995 prisoners. Most of them were Jews, about 70 percent from Hungary, the rest from Poland, Greece, Romania, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

• They bored tunnels inside mountains, built roads and railway tracks, worked in the transportation of building materials. Mortality was very high because of disease, malnutrition, exhaustion, dangerous underground works and the treatment of prisoners by German guards.

Complex Rzeczka

• The complex is located on a borderline between the villages of Rzeczka and Walim, inside Ostra Mountain 50°41 19″N 16°26 40″E. ′ ′There are three entrances leading to parallel tunnels about 45 m away from each other. Between them are large halls (up to 10 m in height), one is reinforced by concrete, two are collapsed.

• The tunnel number 1 is 100 m long and has an almost finished guardroom. There is one shaft leading to the surface (depth 30 m, diameter 5 m), presently filled with rubble. The length of the complex of tunnels is 500 m (2,500 m2, 14,000 m3). Built above ground was the main telephone exchange, capable of serving a few hundred phone numbers.

• A narrow gauge railway was used for transportation. In 1995 the complex Rzeczka was opened for visitors and in spring 2001 transformed into museum. It contains exhibits connected to history of Project Riese.

World War Two: our shared historyWorld War Two: our shared history

• Melania Bednarz, class 5c• SP 9 Dzierżoniów, Poland• April 2014

Resourses:http://www.sztolnie.pl/index.php?strona=rzeczkahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Riese