All attempts to explore the forts and dungeons of this fortress ended in tragedy. And the reasons for the tragedies are still not known.
… With a wave of goodbye, Marianne slowly moved along the flooded underground passage. After walking a few meters, she stopped, checked her equipment and smoothly went under the water. None of those who accompanied her could have imagined that she had set off on her last journey …
Bad glory
In 1882, by decree of Emperor Alexander III, the construction of defensive lines along the line Brest - Warsaw - Kovno (since 1917 Kaunas) - Osovets - Ivangorod began on the western border of the Russian Empire. The largest and most powerful in this chain was to become the Coven Fortress.
Coven forts modern top view
According to the project developed by the best fortifiers, Kovno was supposed to cover two defensive rings. The first, which included eight forts, eight batteries and two central fortifications (bastions with batteries), was built by 1915. In the second ring, due to a lack of funds, only the ninth fort was erected.
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During the First World War, the fortress withstood a two-week siege. For its assault, the Germans brought their famous "Big Bertha" - a heavy large-caliber cannon along a specially laid railway line, only its shells were able to destroy the fortifications.
In the 1920s-1930s, under the bourgeois government, the city prison was located in two forts of the fortress. At the same time, one of the first gas chambers in Europe appeared in the premises of the ninth fort. But after the very first execution, the "procedure" was considered expensive and the cell was no longer used for its intended purpose.
In 1940, when Lithuania became a Soviet republic again, the fortress was occupied by the Red Army. There were rumors in the city that some kind of fortifications were being carried out in the forts. In 1941, the headquarters of the 5th and 11th armies were located there, but after June 22 they lost contact with their formations and left Kaunas on the third day of the war. Some time later, the Germans entered the city, and six forts were turned into concentration camps, among which the largest was camp 1005B, it was called the "death factory".
The French, Austrians, Germans, Poles were brought here. Often they were taken by whole families under the guise of resettlement to the eastern lands. The prisoners were shot at the forts and buried there in the ditch. Then, in 1943, teams of prisoners were engaged in the destruction of traces of mass executions - the corpses were dug up and burned.
Kaunas was liberated by the 5th and 11th armies. After demining, several forts occupied military units, the rest remained abandoned until the city authorities found a use for them: they gave them for vegetable storage, and in the ninth they set up a museum, the exhibits of which told about the horrors of German concentration camps and the fight against the "forest brothers".
The fortress enjoyed a bad reputation among local residents both because of its past and because of numerous rumors. It was rumored, for example, that people disappeared in the empty forts. The main researchers of the structures were the ubiquitous boys, who ransacked everything except the lower floors, which were flooded, as it is assumed, by the retreating Germans.
The first tragedy
In the summer of 1984, a group of speleologists from Vilnius and Kaunas decided to arrange a training route in the flooded porches (underground passages). Taking special equipment, two light scuba gear and two wetsuits, on June 16 the guys entered through the side entrance to the eighth fort.
Working in turns, they walked 40 meters along the right path leading to the barracks garages. A passage three meters high was filled with water almost to the vaults. The visibility was poor, as suspension rose from the bottom at the slightest movement. Nevertheless, the track was laid without much incident.
The next day, the instructor of the Vilnius aquaspeleoclub Marianna M. and the diving instructor Sergei V. went to the pottery. Three guys from Kaunas stayed at the entrance. This time the scuba divers decided to go along the left path.
Marianne went under water first. As Sergei would later tell, the suspension raised from the bottom prevented him from seeing the light from Marianna's lantern, and he swam, holding on to the signal cable. Suddenly the cable “went away” to the side, and Sergei realized that the girl swam into some room, although they agreed not to do this.
Now he had to follow her. Finding himself in some room, Sergei immediately felt that something was wrong. He emerged almost near the ceiling and … was dumbfounded: Marianne without a mask and mouthpiece was beating in convulsions near the surface of the water. Sergei swam up to her, tried to force the mouthpiece into his mouth, but Marianne resisted. Then he dragged the girl to the wall, ordered to hold on (!), And he hurried to get help.
The guys who met him at the entrance to the postern claimed that the guy was in a state of shock. The only thing he could say was "Save Marianne." He flatly refused to return to the pottery. The girl was found already lying at the bottom. Judging by the fact that there was no water in her lungs, she sank down shortly before arriving.
Museum "ghosts"
A week after this event, speleologists from Moscow settled in the fortress. The background of their expedition is as follows. In the early 1970s, a Muscovite Andrei Kostyukov served in a military unit located near the eighth fort. The soldier was interested in the fortifications and more than once, while on leave, he examined the forts.
And once in the city Historical Museum, fate brought him together with one employee, an elderly Lithuanian. Andrei asked her about the concentration camps, and the woman (unfortunately, the soldier did not bother to find out her name then!) Showed a folder with documents from the office of camp 1005B. She allegedly did not know the contents of the documents, since there was no translator in the museum.
From her stories, Andrey remembered the story that happened in the fortress in 1958, when an expedition appeared there, trying to pump out water from the forts. Having failed, those people decided to examine the flooded porches with the help of submariners (there were two of them on the expedition).
They were afraid of mines and traps, so the head of the expedition ordered: go into the trap one by one. The first scuba diver did not return on time. Only the cable was pulled out of the water. A second submariner went to his rescue. And from him there was only a cable cut with a sharp knife … The expedition disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.
Kostyukov served in the army, graduated from the institute, but the thought of exploring the Kovno fortress did not leave him. In the spring of 1984 he came to Kaunas with his friends. To begin with, we decided to find an employee of the museum, whom Andrey had met 12 years ago. And there were no traces of this woman's stay in the museum.
The old employees could not even understand who they were talking about, and, wishing to help the guys, they suggested that ten years ago their colleague was engaged in the fortress, who had moved to work in one of the institutes of Kaunas. But at the institute no one knew this person. And in the house where he was supposed to live, no one ever saw him!
Potential enemy
Finally, Muscovites were lucky - they met the historian Arvydas Panapiunas. Only he did not find a folder with documents of the 1005B concentration camp in the museum's funds. True, I recalled that some documents were transferred to the republican archive. However, searches in Vilnius also yielded nothing.
And yet they came to Kaunas this summer. And they learned about the tragedy that happened in the eighth fort. To avoid such a disaster, they decided to find out what caused the death of the girl. They were introduced to the official conclusion: Marianne drank cold water, which caused a spasm of the glottis.
Kaunas cavers were reluctant to talk about what happened. The rescuer who brought the body to the surface allegedly did not notice anything suspicious in the room. And what is surprising: Marianne's friends did not even try to examine the place of her death. Accident…
Perhaps Muscovites would have accepted this version if strange incidents had not affected themselves.
In the very first days, they lost a backpack with speleos, hidden in the well of the eighth fort at a depth of five meters. They grabbed him at once, but the thief could not be found. And soon after that they noticed that they were being watched very closely. Attempts to catch the "potential enemy", as the guys jokingly called the observers, were unsuccessful.
There were other oddities as well. As soon as the guys who went in search tried to contact the camp by radio on the agreed frequency, some kind of homemade muffler turned on. And in the year of the last expedition, the vehicles of the observers were already openly standing not far from the camp of Muscovites.
Riddle on Riddle
Not a single archive surveyed by Muscovites and Arvydas Panatsiunas contained plans for the underground part of the fortress. One even got the impression that there was no such thing at all. However, the very first work to clear the wells from the rubble cast doubt on this. (By the way, the guys then seized about 3,000 shells from the First and Second World Wars.)
Wells of four types were built in the fortress. The first ones entered the drainage system. The second, with sides, supplied drinking water. Still others, artillery, were located on batteries. All these wells had a diameter of 1.2 to 1.5 meters. Wells of the fourth type with a diameter of 1.8 to 2 meters were in powder magazines. In the vaults above them were powerful hooks, similar to those found in the niches designed to lift ammunition.
The depth of these wells reached 30-35 meters. A connoisseur of fortifications A. P. Ovsyanov put forward a version that the powder magazines had a connection with the central arsenal, that a narrow-gauge railway passed at a depth of about 40 meters, along which ammunition was transported and lifted up through the wells.
Arvydas found a map of the fortress with lines of some kind of communication. And if these are the very same driveways to the powder magazines? Find out. that once not far from the fourth fort, a hole formed, and the unit commander ordered to fill it with concrete. The failure was mapped, and it turned out that it formed on the site of one of the mysterious communication lines.
According to the old-timers, among the SS men in the concentration camps there were many miners by profession, and among the prisoners, those who were familiar with tunneling work were selected. If this is not speculation, then the Germans were building underground. There is no need to talk about a large plant, there were no sources of energy supply. Perhaps they were building some kind of laboratory?
The concentration camp arrivals register indicates that most of the prisoners did not live in the camp for more than three days. The death toll only in the ninth fort (80 thousand) is high even for a camp with mechanized means of destruction (ovens, gas chambers), and in fact, only mass executions were practiced in the camp.
Doesn't this mean that the Germans tested toxic substances here? Then it is clear why the dungeons were flooded. True, given that the Germans left the encirclement in a hurry and light, it can be assumed that they hid the looted valuables in the fortress.
Light in the well …
There is reason to believe that the secret of penetrating underground passages and premises was known to some local residents. In 1946, on the first battery, not far from the airfield, the soldiers who were stationed at night saw a light flickering in the well, and then a man got out of there. When the soldiers reached the well, the stranger was gone.
In the 1970s, on the territory of the fort, in the location of a military unit, a short peasant was noticed more than once. They tried to detain him, but he fell through the ground. And a little later he was met already far from the fort and drunk. Did he not apply to the reserves left underground since the occupation?
While examining a drinking well in an old barracks, Muscovites found a grenade tied to the stairs with a rope. If one of them had stepped on a step, the cable would have pulled tight, pulled the pin, and then there would have been an explosion. The sappers are sure that this structure could not have been the work of the Germans, they had enough mines.
Who set the grenade? Wanted to scare away those who would try to explore the wells? And doesn't this mean that the entrance to the underground part of the fortress should be looked for in the wells?
In 1987, a Moscow expedition began to survey the flooded porches. But two days later the work was stopped - Igor K., who was in charge of the eighth fort, died, thereby where Marianna died. On that day, he returned to the camp later than the rest of the guys. He said that he would surprise everyone at dinner, and went to wash his hands to a small lake. And he never returned.
They rushed to look for him. Local children reported that they saw Igor and he was walking into the city. The next day, they searched the bottom of the lake with hooks, just in case. And on the third day, Igor's body surfaced in the same lake. Andrei Kostyukov, who first examined him, claimed: a strangulated furrow was visible on the guy's neck, and he stayed in the water no more than a day.
For some reason, the body was not frozen in the morgue, an autopsy was carried out three days later, when the furrow disappeared. The death was attributed to an accident.
Only questions
The more you think about all these terrible secrets, the more questions arise. What kind of expedition appeared in the fortress in 1958? If from the MGB-NKVD. How did an ordinary employee of the museum find out about her works? And where did this employee go? And her mysterious colleague? If Marianne died in an accident, then what scared her partner so much? Who watched the Moscow expedition? No, yes now for sure there will be no answers …
According to the latest information provided by a former KGB officer, the Germans who settled in Argentina after 1945 showed great interest in the Kaunas fortress.