This story is rather confusing, little supported by evidence and ignored by official historical science. But somehow the mystery of the Polish town of Kenshitsa fascinates - like the adventures of Indiana Jones, the hero of the beloved film cycle. Perhaps, if Steven Spielberg had known about the memories of the former military prosecutor, retired colonel of justice Alexander Liskin, the brave American archaeologist Jones would have shown miracles of dexterity and cunning in the dungeons of northwestern Poland. Alexander Ivanovich is sure that there is an incredible underground city built by the Germans to protect their borders.
What did the military prosecutor see?
In his memoirs, Alexander Liskin talks about a trip to the Polish village of Kenshitsa, lost in the folds of the relief. It happened in the 60s of the last century. It was here, not far from the village, that the Germans at one time built their Mezeritsky fortified area, which includes a defensive rampart, a military town and other objects, of which only ruins and individual structures remained then. The Germans called the fortified area Regenwurmlager, that is, "Camp of the earthworm."
After the war, one of the communications brigades of the Northern Group of Soviet Forces was based in the former German town, to which the military prosecutor arrived. He examined the surroundings and Lake Krzyva, admiring its beauty and tranquility. However, Liskin did not yet realize that subway tunnels, built by the Nazis and now abandoned forever, snake right under his feet!
Wanting to entertain the distinguished guest, the colleagues accompanying the prosecutor showed Liskin an island on the lake and said that he was slowly drifting along the water surface like a raft. Kshiva had a continuation in the form of an appendix, in the center of which the guest saw a metal tower reminiscent of the air intakes of the Moscow metro. And waste heaps - artificial embankments around the lake - as it turned out, are penetrated with passages rushing into the depths of the earth.
Liskin knew that from the end of the war until the beginning of the 50s, “The earthworm camp was abandoned, and only the Russians, having settled here, were engaged in reconnaissance of these places. First of all, sappers worked in the vicinity of the fortified area, looking for minefields and weapons depots. The soldiers explored the entire area and made many amazing discoveries: for example, they discovered an underground power cable designed for 380 volts, a well into which a stream of water fell, and much more, indicating the presence of a large-scale underground object. Garrison engineers concluded that the mysterious well was part of an autonomous power plant, and the water falling into it turned a turbine.
They also found a disguised entrance to the tunnel, apparently equipped with traps, since one daredevil who drove into it on a motorcycle on a dare never returned.
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In the early 1950s, signalmen nevertheless managed to penetrate the tunnel, and they were even able to walk several kilometers along it. On their way, the military saw many branches, but did not dare to turn off anywhere.
Rumors and facts
Still, it is strange that Alexander Liskin did not try to look into the maze. The prosecutor cites the description of the "Camp of the earthworm" from the words of an unnamed officer, who also did not see the Regenwurmlager himself, but only heard the stories of people who had been underground.
“Below us, as far as one can assume, is an underground city, where there is everything necessary for an autonomous life for many years.
By the light of battery-powered lanterns, people entered the underground subway. It was precisely the metro, since an underground railway track was laid along the bottom of the tunnel.
Almost immediately, they discovered an underground crematorium. Perhaps it was in his furnaces that the remains of the underground builders burned down.
The grandiose underground network remained a labyrinth threatening to the uninitiated."
It is known that the commander of the Northern Group of Forces, Colonel-General P. S. Maryakhin, but he did not leave his testimonies.
In addition to the officer's impressions, Liskin also conveys a description of the "city" made by one of the last commanders of the Kenshitsk brigade, Colonel V. I. Spiridonov. It must be said that the underground German tunnel in the 1970s had already turned into an exotic attraction, however, only for a select few - the highest officers of the Soviet army, abandoned in these places by fate and command.
Spiridonov talks about an engineering-sapper report, which stated that 44 kilometers of underground communications were examined under the garrison. The height and width of the tunnel were three meters each, the walls and ceiling of the metro were reinforced with reinforced concrete slabs, and the floor was lined with stone slabs. Spiridonov himself went down into the tunnel in an army "UAZ" and drove through the maze towards Germany for 20 kilometers.
Another thing is also interesting. Around the lake there were many preserved and destroyed wartime objects built of reinforced concrete. Powerful pillboxes were equipped with large-caliber machine guns and cannons, and below them, to a depth of 50 meters, the floors where the barracks and warehouses were located. Ground and underground structures were connected with each other and with metro labyrinths.
Both the Germans who built the Regen-wurmlager and the Russians who dug it out carefully concealed information about the tunnel from both local residents and the local government. It is known that only one Polish ethnographer, Doctor Podbelsky, was actively interested in the labyrinth, but studied it only in the first post-war years, before the Russian garrison was located in the German military town.
In the 1980s, Podbelsky was over 80, and he said that the construction of this object began in 1927, and since 1937, work went at high speed, as Hitler was preparing for war. The local historian claimed that the Fuhrer himself came here from Berlin - on the rails of an underground road. And hidden underground communications lead to secret factories and strategic storage facilities five kilometers from Lake Kshiva.
And this lake is also with a secret. The area of Kshiva is more than 200 thousand meters. and the depth scale is from three to 20 meters. On its silted bottom, many fishermen noticed a large hatch, which, perhaps, should have been hidden under the same floating island. This hatch could serve as a kingston for the emergency flooding of the labyrinth, but in January 1945 the Germans probably had no time for flooding.
In 1992, the Russians left Kenshitsa, leaving the mysteries of the underground labyrinth to the Poles.
Is all this possible?
Usually, if official science is silent about something impressive, then this fact is either complete nonsense, or one hundred percent truth, but somehow connected with modern people and realities.
Why there is so little research on Camp Earthworm is anyone's guess. And at your leisure, you should think about how the Regenwurm lager was built at all?
And why did the Germans not build such a labyrinth in Germany? At the time of its construction, Poland was a free country (from 1921 to 1939), which could have become an obstacle for such an active work of the Germans. And Germany itself in 1927 barely got on its feet after the First World War, having received in 1924 billions of dollars in loans from the United States and Great Britain. It is unlikely that the German government had enough funds for such a large-scale event.
The very idea - to organize a metro in a neighboring state - seems very strange. If the labyrinth was built for defensive purposes, in case, as Liskin said, “if the war rolls back,” it turns out that the fascists did not manage to take advantage of the possibilities of the underground city. They saved some military units, but this did not lead to radical changes on the fronts. Was it worth it, in this case, to "bother" and dig all these many kilometers of tunnels?
Disappeared in an unknown direction
But there was another mysterious fact that even military historians could not explain, but which is fully explained by the existence of underground German communications in the Kenshitsy area. During the battles in 1945, the 44th Guards Tank Brigade of the First Guards Tank Army of General M. E. Katukova. The brigade met with two German regiments, the school of the SS "Death's Head" division and parts of the support services. The Germans quickly realized that it was impossible to resist our tanks, and … they disappeared in just a few hours. How did the Nazis do this, given that the escape routes had already been cut off? Perhaps the Regenwurm lager helped to save the Nazis.
By the way, especially curious readers of "Secrets" can be advised to search the Internet for a video filmed in the places described.
It remains to be hoped that Polish historians will be able to reveal to us the riddles of the "Earthworm Camp" and explain when and why this fortified area was built. In the meantime, we will wait for the next film from the series about Indiana Jones!
Yana Rozova. Magazine "Secrets of the XX century" No. 27 2011
