WIX Archives
Re: Cave-finds, your opinion........
Posted by Kenneth on Mon Apr 15, 2002 12:54:40 PM
In reply top Cave-finds, your opinion........ posted by Cees Broere on Mon Apr 15, 2002 06:47:42 AM
I live in southern Germany and from the information I have
been able to glean from websites, TV programmes and various
articles it is quite clear that there are still quite a
number of underground facilities about, which were bricked
up after the war and have never been opened since. Some
of them are also still in use for other purposes; i.e.
a cave at the end of the Munich - Garmisch motorway, which
was allegedly used for Me 262 construction. The gate is
plainly visible from the road and it seems to be in use
by road maintenance crews.
The search for the "amber room" rears it head periodically
in the media here, and one article mentioned a vast net-
work below Weimar which had been closed at the end of
the war and has never been opened since.
A club in Berlin ("Berliner Unterwelten e.V", I think) has
explored a significant number of underground areas in
Berlin, which have only come to light since massive
building work started in Berlin after October 3, 1990. I
remember reading that they (?) found several complete filing
cabinets with details of forced labourers.
A leaflet from the TIGHAR organisation dealt with this
issue ("Operation Sephulcre") but without any conclusive
findings. They had centered their search about a reputed
facility near Kassel, but determined that all was gone,
I believe.
I think there is some reluctance towards reopening these
places and that many people would prefer them to be
forgotten. I am quite convinced that something may still
turn up; maybe not a complete, mothballed Bf 109, but
interesting finds nonetheless. It is however a subject
which needs to be approached with a great degree of
sensitivity since many of these places where the locations
of a lot of human suffering. I don't think I would like
to see any conceivable part scooped out of Nordhausen and
being sold on the collector's market.
Incidentally, Peter W. Cohausz' book on preserved German
aircraft mentions a rumour about a "... complete Bf 109
stashed away somewhere in southern Germany." This has
made me take a completely new interest in barns. Also the
frame of a Gotha Go 145 apparently came out of a forest
somewhere in the Bavarian mountains.
Kenneth