MYSTERIOUS PLACES IN POLAND

I would like to present seven most mysterious places in Poland

MIĘDZYRZECKI REINFORCED AREA. THE ENTIRE UNDERGROUND CITY

Barracks for 7 thousand soldiers, bathrooms with the running water, larders, magazines of the ammunition, power stations, not to mention the station of underground railways. Everything ventilated, lighted and connected with tunnels about the total length of 28 km, and built 40 meters below the level of the ground the city was the Nazis reply to the Maginot line. Huge investment ate up the sum equal of taking out 10 armoured divisions.

The object was seized by the Soviet army in 1945 without a single shot being fired – because of the mistake of Germans. German troops on location were observing the cavalcade of their own military vehicles retreating to Berlin. One night, a Soviet tank drove straight into the complex because bored staff did not recognize it and took it as their own.

MIĘDZYRZECKI REINFORCED AREA

KOPICE. PALACE OF THE CINDERELLA

Person: Karol Godula, millionaire; Joanna Gryczik, an orphan; count Hans Ulrich Schaffgotsch

Action: in the village near Zabrze Karol Godula is born. Silesian Bill Gates is starting from scratch, at first is

completing the education, gets a job, is promoted quickly and becomes the administrator, then a partner,

finally the owner of the zincworks. In 50 years of hard work he gahters 2 millions of thalers fortune (in our

times: about 200 milions of Polish zlotys). His empire consists of 59 mines, three milles and square kilometres

of the arable ground. He lives in Szombierki. The lame workaholic isn't lucky to women, and dies without any

heir to his fortune. Right before the death he is bequeathing the almost entire fortune to six-year-old Joanna

Gryczik, the orphan of his female servant.

Joanna along with the wealth is inheriting the knighthood: von Schomberg-Godulla. Since furious family of the

industrialist sends threats to her, she lives all her adulthood at the monastery in Wrocław. On 16. birthday

the asylum in Wrocław is changed – she marries Hans Schaffgotsch.

The count is handsome and brilliant, but without any money at all. But that's alright. Joanna is signing the

prenuptial agreement and proves that she is worth the title of the heiress to the king of zinc. She administers

the capital left for her, enlarging it seven times. She opens next mines, founds schools and orphanages. She

moves with her husband to the palace in in Kopice, and soon it becomes one of the most beautiful Silesian

residences. In the new, neo-Gothic view it looks like the Tudor castle, surrounded with fairy-tale gardens, in

which grow and fruit! pineapples.

PALACE IN KOPICE

ODRY - THE MOST NUMEROUS STONE CIRCLES IN POLAND

It isn't easy to get here; the sandy road is meandering near the edge of a field, a pine forest is nearby and looks like it was taken from the dream. The fog is all around straightened trunks of pines and thorny juniper columns. By the earth berry bushes and soft, dark-green, intensively yellow, silvery mosses are creeping. One can see lichens everywhere - their presence is a sign that the air in Tuchola Forest is crystal clear.

Most valuable of lichens are those from the period when Pomerania was a tundra, and was expanding its area only by the millimetre for the whole single century! It is possible to observe them on stones. Planted upright into the earth concentrically-oriented rocks are covered with bright lichens. There are 12 circles. The biggest is 33 m in the diameter.

The stone circles in Odry were hidden in the forrest up to the late seventies. During the excavations around the forest a clearing was created which, observed from above (for example in the Google Earth program which contains precise pictures of this region) looks like the bald patch on the green hair of Tuchola Forest. Nowadays, heathers grow here and change themselves into violet-emerald flower beds in the Autumn.

Circles have their admirers who claim that structures are between 6 to 8 thousand years old. They are believed to be an astronomical calendar, a chakra, a portal leading to other time and space, or a group of pseudtourists enchanted into stoned by Forest Aunt, minder of Tuchola Forests.

ODRY

RESZEL. THE LAST WITCH IN EUROPE

Barbara Zdunk was innocent – or so the historians say. She was burnt down because she was a nuisance to somebody. The last victim of the Inquisition was 38 years old, had four children and the young lover - an idler who spent the majority of the time in the local inn. It is the conflict among the couple which caused the tragedy .

It is not known up to this day what Barbara did at night between 16 and 17 September 1807. Was it possible that her lover was in the pub? Perhaps he was; she became furious when her lover did not pay attention to her at all, so she took him and his drunk companions to task. She called him names. Barbara quickly left the pub, and met Polish soldiers in the back alley. There were drunk, too.

The violent conflagration of Reszel is imputed to those anonymous soldiers. It occured in the worst possible moment – when the city was just built from scratch after the previous fire just the year before which digested the almost entire wooden building development (only brick-built castle and church were not damaged). The present fire damaged the castle and killed two residents. Locals were furious.

Annoyingly enough, the Prussian prosecutor could not find the arsonist. Somebody recalled that the night two people died, a woman was seen in the back alley. And it was Barbara! She bumped her fists over the walls and muttered something. What is an irritated woman doing at night, in the back alley, just the seconds before the great conflagration starts? She sets the fire, of course! Why? The revenge… How? By casting spells. A witch!

Barbara is the last European witch sentenced to death in the official process. 25 years after her death the last Polish victim that supposedly was a witch died. She was Krystyna Ceynowa from Chałupy. Being unpopular in the village, the locals put the poor widow to the Water-ordeal test. She did not drown thanks to the wide skirts. So the villagers found her guilty of being witch.

LOCK IN RESZEL, WITCH

CZERMNA - THE MOST MACABRE PLACE IN POLAND

A chapel of Skulls is a souvenir that is the legacy of the Czech priest Wacław

Tomaszek who in 1774 was a parish priest in Czermna. Two years later he

decided to take care of the shallow forest graves of victims of a smallpox from

the XVIII century. Adding the victims of two Silesian Wars and the 7-year War the

priest collected estimated amount of 24 thousand skeletons. The chapel’s ceiling

and walls are decorated with 3 thousand skulls and tibiae. The rest of bones lies

underneath the chapel’s floor.

The priest supervised the project personally. As he was switched on, he became

inspired with Roman chapels where human skeletons were used as an ornament.

It was priest’s initiative to decorate the chapel in Czermna with human bones.

Skulls surround the altar, crossed shinbones fill up the side walls and the ceiling.

The completion works lasted for almost 30 years. Every single bone was

disinfected and impregnated with lye. Therefore, they didn't turn grey. However,

the rest of the bones that are kept underneath the floor are slowly turning into

dust, which a person visiting the chapel can see in air, when the crypt under the

chapel is opened. The layer of bones that are kept there is lowering every year.

A CHAPEL OF SKULLS

KLICZKÓW. ONLY GRAVEYARD OF HORSES IN POLAND

The horse was called Juno and died in 1938. His owner, count Henryk zu Solms-Baruth, could not be reconciled with a death of the beloved horse so he put a gravestone on his grave. Small mound made from field stones together with the big rock with the board, was created on the extensive meadow near the castle in Kliczków. Amongst a dozen of similar graves.

Still in the 50s there were a dozen or so of small graves in the horse graveyard in Kliczków. After the Second World War however the obelisks were recognized as the common property and developed by the residents of the surrounding areas. Only two horse graves survived to these days.

It is the only one horse graveyard in Poland. The closest one is located in Hamburg.

GRAVEYARD OF HORSES

WALIM. SECRET INVESTMENT

The only known facts about this secret project in Poland are those which state that it was ordered by Adolf Hitler

to be built on the brink of the end of the Second World War.

In June 1943 a group of Scandinavian engineers appeared in the massif of the Włodarz, near Walim village. They

were 120 Danes and Norwegians employed by the Industriegemeinschaft Schlesien AG company. It isn't

known what they dealt with, but after a few weeks of the field work in the complete isolation they were taken

away with an escort of soldiers. Next, the Italian engineers came. The specialists of rock crushing placed

explosive charges in chosen points of the massif. The explosions and further interior works were carried out

in complete secrecy.

When in 1944 the representatives of the Lower Silesia company were replaced with the workers of the Todt

Organization (the same which was responsible for construction of The Siegfried Line), clandestine works

gained the pace. For construction of the underground complex in the Owl Mountains „the cheapest” workers

were employed – the prisoners. They were being brought to the place of construction mainly from the nearby

concentration camp in Rogoźnica – Gross-Rosen. The Jews working there without time to rest were of Polish,

Czech, Greek origin. They carved sloping corridors in solid gneiss rock. The pace of work was horrendous,

and the conditions of work were inhuman.

The constuction of the Giant, because that was a code name of the secret investment, was stopped by the Soviet

Army offensive. Today it seems that Germans left the building site in panic; they left tools, train wagons

which were used to take mining away, formworks, building materials, not to mention Donovit used for

explosions. In the drifts that were made available for sightseeing, tourist can see tracks of soldiers’ shoes

incused in cement, sacks with 65 year old fossilized cement, spoons and tin bowls which belonged to

prisoners. There are also newer things to see. There is a German army truck standing by the entrance to the

drift in Osówka. It was used in the making of the movie series „Tajemnica Twierdzy Szyfrów”.

UNDERGROUND CORRIDORS IN WŁODARZ

Discover most secret and magic places in Poland - secret investment of Hitler, the underground city, the chapel of skulls, the graveyard of horses, or the Palace of the Cinderella!

Natalia Wyporska