We first wrote about the mysterious underground facilities in the Sowie Mountains in the Voice on July 13, 2003, attempting to discover what the gigantic structures were meant for. Then, on April 11, 2004 we tried to trace the fate of the people who built them. Now it’s time to look at the postwar history of the Sowie Mountains.

The years 1945-50 in the history of the Sowie Mountains are a period about which there is very little information, suspiciously little in fact. Together with the Red Army units, a reconnaissance unit of the Polish Army arrived in the area in May 1945. Its commander, Włodzimierz Furyk, stated in 1968 that his unit had seized a truck with documentation concerning the work carried out in the Sowie Mountains as well as camp files. He handed this find over to the Military Command in Wrocław.

In Wrocław the documentation was analyzed by the military, and later also by the security service. Together they tried to fill in the gaps it contained. There is also some circumstantial evidence that not only was documentation taken over, but also German specialists, designers and builders of the underground town in the Sowie Mountains.

■ Easy prey
Strewn with large amounts of building materials and machinery, the Sowie Mountain region was very valuable to a country ruined as a result of six years of war. That’s why it drew such great interest immediately after the war. Many institutions and companies, both state and private, not to mention ordinary citizens, were involved in extracting these riches. Slowly, these activities became more and more organized over a large area. Coordination was the responsibility of the Ministry of Reconstruction. In fact, though, this was looting pure and simple.

In 1947, underground structures in the Sowie Mountains briefly attracted the interest of the Oder Line Mine-Clearing (Disarmament) Operation, which was affiliated with the Economic and Social Department of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Its task was to seek out, inventory and secure any military facilities in Lower Silesia. They were even preparing to go into the then already inaccessible parts of the underground structures, but an intervention about which we know very little, but which probably came from the military and the security service, caused the Operation to resign from these plans.

In late summer 1947, Second Lieut. Jan Radek from the Provincial Public Security Office in Wrocław was sent to Walim in the Sowie Mountains, on a mission to search for the missing documentation. Allegedly, he was instructed to follow a map with marked entrances to the underground facilities. Ostensibly, the result of his mission was “over 20 kilograms” of documents, including lists of those who had died or been killed as well as death sentence lists. Where are they today?

In 1948, the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Public Security set up a special agency—the State Enterprise for Field Searches (PPT). This body was active for close to two years. It was based in Wrocław with branches in Szczecin and Olsztyn, since its activities covered the previously German regions awarded to Poland in 1945 at the Potsdam peace conference—the Regained Territories, namely Lower Silesia, Western Pomerania, Warmia and Mazuria, as well as a unit in the Sowie Mountains.

The PPT employed many specialists, mainly engineers, and had its own, well-equipped teams of divers and miners. The PPT’s tasks included “discovering, securing and transferring to the proper authorities and institutions any state property in the Regained Territories that, according to the law in force, is the property of the State Treasury but has not yet been transferred to those authorities and institutions nor has been secured by them.” Putting it bluntly, this was exploitation with a semblance of lawfulness. The authors of the idea were Defense Deputy Minister Brig. Gen. Piotr Jaroszewicz (who later became prime minister) and Public Security Deputy Minister Mieczysław Mietkowski.

Most probably to assist its activity in the Sowie Mountains, the PPT was given the previously intercepted German documentation and German specialists. Interestingly, mentions of its activity were published in the press. The result of that activity is that the underground structures were stripped of anything that could be taken away or ripped out, leaving bare rock and concrete.

■ Where are they?
The Main Commission for Investigating Nazi Crimes in Poland organized an expedition into the Sowie Mountains in 1964, headed by Dr. Jacek Wilczur, with support from the Polish Army. There were problems with this, because the chief of staff of the Silesian Military District (within whose area of operation the Sowie Mountains lie), Gen. Mieczysław Mazur, opposed the army’s participation. Permission was ultimately granted by the district commander, Gen. Eugeniusz Molczyk.

The expedition received media coverage. The journalists observing the preparations and then the expedition included Lieut. Bohdan Świątkiewicz from the magazines Żołnierz Polski and Żołnierz Wolności, who recapped the story of Second Lieut. Radek and appealed for any information on the matter. In effect, Radek himself contacted him; apparently he was working at “a Wrocław institution” (the Security Service) by this time. He confirmed that he had been in the Sowie Mountains in 1947 and had found documents which he had allegedly deposited in “a certain Wrocław institution” (the Security Service).

What were the intercepted documents and specialists used for? Was their purpose really only to carry out well-organized and systematic looting, or perhaps something else as well? We don’t know. The documents found in 1945 and 1947 by the army and the security services have “gone missing,” or more precisely, they were appropriated by the Polish special services for over half a century. The only question is, what for?

The only problem now is to find out which archive the documents are being stored in, and then the Sowie Mountains can finally reveal their secrets. Maybe we will find out what Adolf Hitler’s first underground quarters, which neither he nor any of his generals were ever able to use, were meant to or even what they actually looked like.
Piotr Lewandowski


The author is a student of the Law and Administration Department of Warsaw University, and for several years has been carrying out studies aimed at explaining the mystery of underground military facilities in Lower Silesia. He is currently preparing his latest expedition to the region. The Voice is the media patron of this project. For more information, e-mail: wars98@wp.pl

After the publication of the first article on the mysterious underground structures in the Sowie Mountains, the writer received many letters from all over the world. People expressing an interest in the topic were from countries such as United States, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Great Britain. Some of them declared their willingness to take part in a research expedition, or at least to visit the accessible parts of the underground structures. Some readers had seen similar facilities in their own countries.


The Sowie Mountains with their highest peak, Wielka Sowa (1,015 m above sea level), are an imposing massif stretching 25 km westward from the Bystrzyca River valley to Srebrna Pass, which separates them from the Bardzkie Mountains. Made up of gneiss rock whose age is estimated at approx. 3 billion years, they are one of the oldest mountain ranges in Poland. They are in the form of a compact block with relatively even peaks and steep slopes. The upper regions of these mountains are overgrown by thick spruce forests and some beech.