POW camps by the Polarbahn

Today I had the day off, so after a long coffee and facebook session in the morning I decided to get into my digger clothes. I had no plan but after driving a few kilometers my brain had decided to get up into the mountains. I knew that would involve a lot of walking so I tried to protest, but the brain would not listen to any arguments. I parked the car by the river and looked up at the mountain side. Far up there I could see where the railroad cut through the terrain.
 I have visited here before so some readers might recognize at least one of the spots I visited today. The forest around the road leading up to the railroad is full of traces from the wartime. I know the locations of two POW camps here but wanted to find a third one I haven`t visited yet.

After half hour walking I started getting warm and at the same time I started seeing the first remains from the camps. The base of barbed wire fenceposts hammered into the rocky ground, rusted barrels and rolls of the barbed wire fence lay ditched by the road. The road itself has been upgraded in modern times, but is still nothing more than a rocky tractor road laid on heavy stone foundations, parts of it built by the Russian soldiers kept as slaves by the Germans. 
 Soon I make a stop by a dumping site for some pics. Lots of small ovens for barracks is dumped here, also tons of rusted food tins covers the ground beneath the moss. The ovens is in sad conditions but on some of them one can find the producers names. Most of the ones here seems to be of the Org. Todt type.

The next little stop I made on my trek was a few kilometers further, on one of the camp sites. It is a little creepy place where one can see where the different barracks stood, fences rolled up and dumped here and there and lots of barrels and other stuff littering the forest. This camp housed 3-400 POWs and several lost their life here.

Getting closer to the railroad I started noticing all the drills left where they had been drilled into the mountain. I spotted a long rock filling on the other side of the railway and went over with the hopes that this was the site I was looking for. I found a couple of building foundations, but nothing more that could lead me to think it was the campsite. I followed the rockfilling and my heart jumped. I was staring at a black bunker wall!! Well,it was a small bunker, but still,I had not expected to see something like that here. After taking a pic of it I opened the door and peeked inside. I had hoped for big things,jewels,the amber room or a tunnel leading to a hidden complex, but it wasn`t something even remotely like it. Behind the bunker walls was water pumping or purification station. The floors was so rotten that I didnt dare enter in fear of falling into a hidden well..

I backtracked the road a bit and walked up another road I had passed earlier. Behind the first turn I saw a large stone trolley probably used by the POWs dumped in the roadside. More rust was lying up ahead and again I hoped I had found the camp I was looking for. I searched over quite a big area but found only three foundations from buildings and a small dumping pit with food tins and bottles mostly. 
At this point I was getting real hungry, I looked at the clock and I had been walking around for almost 6 hours. It was time to get back home and continue the search another day.