BUNKER IN KONEWKA
At the end of 1939 Germans began to build the military headquarters (called "Anlage Mitte") of WW II near Spała and Tomaszow Mazowiecki. They were supposed to be used in the war with Soviet Union which was anticipated by Hitler. The building was conducted by "Chemische Werke Askania Enterprise" which employed German and Italian workers. Two complexes of concrete bunkers were built in the forest - the first in Konewka near Spała, the second one in Jelen next to Tomaszow Mazowiecki. It consisted of the railway bunker (380 m long) for command train and bunkers in which power station, boiler house, water tank and pump were situated. The whole area was canalised and ameliorated as well as surrounded by double fence with barbed wire. A few small pillboxes were built near Konewka and the airfield was built near Glinnik. The building of both of complexes was finished in June 1941, a few days before Germans assault on Sowiet Union.
During the war the railway bunker was not used according to its purpose and trains seldom arrived there. In 1944 Germans organised ammunition magazine in Konewka. Additionaly, there was Daimler-Benz aircraft engines factory in Jelen.
Nowadays the Bunker in Konewka is open to visitors. There are exhibitions, which illustrate the history of these bunkers, plans and models as well as military items, guns, soldiers equipment from WW II, reports about the bats that winter in the bunkers and information about Spała Landscape Park. The site is used by the organisers of "Military Picnics" as well as for historical re-enactments and for displays of old military vehicles.
Contact: imax@o2.pl, Best Polish tourist attractions , Tourist attractions in Poland
- Bunker for command train
- Power station bunker
- Water treatment bunker
- Water tank
- Water pump bunker
- Fuel tank
- Underground technical passage
- Railwaye
- Main nave with railway track
- Side corridor
- Air conduit
- Cable conduit
- Gas resistant door
- Side exit
- Fastening camouflage
- Camouflage netting
- foundation
A temporary exhibition 'Bunkers, shelters and trenches
During the interwar period the Polish war doctrine assumed defence on the eastern direction (the so-called "Plan W"). When the threat of the conflict with the Third Reich became real, only on 4 March 1939 the General Staff of the Polish Army set about working preliminarily on a defensive plan "West" (Plan "Z"). In July 1939, on the area of the Łódź province, among others, hasty building works started, which were completed only partially. Most defensive structures were built on the right bank of the rivers Warta and Widawka, in the region of action of the army 'Łódź' ; forty-seven ferroconcrete combat shelters (one- or two-loophole) and observation shelters were built or started to be built. The lines of shelters supplemented the network of trenches, artillery observers' positions, wood-earth shelters, entanglements and tank traps.
Those fortifications were used only to a minimal extend during the fights with Germans.
After seizing Polish territory, the Germans started to carry out their own programme of building a defensive system there. A phenomenon, and today a tourist attraction of a kind, are two complexes of mighty German railway shelters in Konewka and Jeleń, which were the basic elements of the German headquarters in the area 'Centre' ('Gefechtsstand - Anlage Mitte'). The shelters destined to protect the staff trains and the shelters' technical base were built in the first half of 1941 before the German invasion of the Soviet Union. In view of the fast progress of the German offensive in the East, they were not used to serve the purpose they were created for. Trains were stationed in them only occasionally. In 1944 the shelters were used for military production and as weapons depots. In January 1945 the shelters were taken without fight by the Russians. After the war, they served for many years as warehouses.
In the abandoned and devastated shelters a Tourist Route "The shelter in Konewka" was created in 2005.
The fast offensive of the Red Army in the middle of 1944 and the Soviet Army entering the Vistula grounds forced the Germans to develop a short-time plan of building the system of fortifications between the Vistula and the Odra River. Works on its realisation started on a large scale in August 1944 and were continued until January 1945. They included three large strips of defence ('a', 'b' and 'c') and a number of supporting buildings, as well as the East Prussian system of defence. West of Łódź there were created fragments of the strips 'b-1' (the section from Włocławek via Kłodawa, Poddębice, Szadek, Zduńska Wola to the Warta) and 'b-2' (the section from Konin to Praszka, on the left bank of the Warta River). South-east of Łódź, at the same time there was created the so-called 'Pilica River Line'. About eighty small combat and passive shelters were built there (the line of the defence ran along the Pilica from Sulejów via Tomaszów, as far as beyond Inowłódz). Mostly they were the 'Ringstande' shelters, some of them were equipped with turrets that had been taken from damaged tanks.
The Pilica River Line stopped the Russians' offensive for only twenty-four hours. Many of these shelters can be still seen nowadays.
In the time of the German occupation of Łódź, like in many other Polish cities, there was created a whole system of shelters and air raid slits for the civilians, as a part of the anti-aircraft defence programme. Its traces can be still found today. Tenements' basements were converted into shelters by strengthening their doors and ceilings, by introducing emergency evacuation exits and by equipping the rooms with furniture essential for people sheltering there. Such shelters were marked with white letters 'LSR' (Luftschutzraum; an air raid shelter) painted on the houses' walls.
The air raid slits were built in the yards of properties and in parks.
Probably the largest bunker complex in Łódź from the time of World War II was the complex built near the Lublinek airport. It is almost certain that it was the medical base of the airport.
The underground complex was five hundred and twenty-five square meters in area, with a capacity of sixteen hundred cubic metres.
The bunker complex in the area of Bałucki Market in Łódź is still an unresolved issue. During the occupation it was situated within the area of the Łódź Ghetto and presumably it was built for the functionaries working in the situated nearby 'Getto' posts of the Łódź Gestapo and the criminal police.
CONTEMPORARY TRACES OF WAR HISTORY
Spała was a place where important events in 19th and 20th century Polish history took place. It has witnessed the Russian partition and Tsarist domination, the bloody battles during WW I, regaining of independence in 1918, and prosperity in the times of the Second Polish Republic. It survived the outbreak of WW II and one of the battles in the tragic September 1939 campaign, as well as the dark days of Nazi occupation and the fighting in 1945.
Few traces of Spała's war past have survived to contemporary times. Today one can see some of the preserved buildings which recall the times of the Tsar's residence, occupied by the structures of the German commanding staff "Oberost", hotels Rogacz - officers' quarters, Dzik - telephone exchange and the secretary's office, the villa Jelonek - headquarters, the building of the orangery and coach-house (today: Spała Residence, Spała Guest Rooms, café Arcadia ) - during the war garages and workshops. One of the two hospital buildings put up by the Germans still exists - after the war it became a rest house Żubr (on the site of the second hospital there is now a grand hotel - Hotel Mościcki).
Also one of the two wooden barracks set up during the war has survived - later it became an office, today, extensively rebuilt, it houses a restaurant Zajazd Spalski (Spała Inn).
Around Spała
More remnants and relics from the times of the two world wars can be found in the vicinity of Spała.
The largest ones are the complexes of shelters in nearby Konewka and somewhat remoter Jeleń.
The railway shelter at Konewka is now accessible to visitors - there is a Tourist Track "Bunkier w Konewce" (Shelter at Konewka) visited by great numbers of tourists. In Konewka itself, one of the barracks set up when the complex was under construction has survived , as well as a building with a canteen and officers' quarters in it (built as early as during tsarist times). In the forest, remnants of earthen fortifications and defence positions can be still found. Between Konewka and Glinnik II there are two rather small fighting shelters for protecting the area of the quarters, and in the airfield, where the 25th Brigade of Air Cavalry is stationed at present, there still stands an air-shed from the times of President Mościcki that had been brought to the place by the Germans from the landing field near Spała.
There are also several small underground air-raid shelters there. In Teofilów, which is not far away, and also in Tomaszów and Inowłódz dozens of fighting shelters can be seen, constituting part of the "PiIica River Line" built by the Germans in 1944.
In Inowłódz, it is worth visiting the war cemetery, which arose after World War I.
|
www.spala.info.pl
_________________
www.spala.pl
_________________
www.bunkrowiec.com.pl
_________________
www.bunkierbanda.up.pl
_________________
|
