Under
the main railway station in Szczecin and partly
inside
a nearby slope is hidden the largest non-military shelter in Poland.
This
anti-aircraft shelter was built during the World War II. To finish
it, Germans used
18
th
century
corridors. After the WWII the shelter was converted into a nuclear
one. During the air raids it was a shelter for approx. 5000 people.
It is located at a depth of 5 levels.
The
walls
and
ceiling are made of 3 meters
of
reinforced concrete. The total surface
area
of the shelter is about 3000 m2.
The
history of well-known to locals concrete ship „Ulrich
Finsterwalder” - a hull located on Dąbie lake – is connected to
the bunker.
All
evidence points to the fact that the German engineer Ulrich
Finsterwalder, who was chairing a committee for building concrete
ships during WWII, also designed a staircase leading 18 m underground
to the bunker.
Amongst
the tourists from Poland and abroad, the shelter is also visited by
Polish national TV stations (TVN, TVP, Polsat) and foreign television
crews (BBC, Channel 4, ZDF and more), as well as independent film and
TV producers such as Jurek Owsiak.
Szczecin
Underground Routes was also used as a film set for the movie
„The
Great Escape to the North”,
a story about further lives of the
protagonists from „The Great Escape” movie from 1963.
Synopsis:
- At the night of 24
th
March 1944, a group of prisoners escapes through the tunnel from the
best-guarded prison of the Third Reich – Stalag Luft III in Żagań.
Two Norwegian pilots, Per Bergsland and Jens M
üller
decide that the harbour city Stettin (Szczecin) is their gateway to
freedom.
- They experience a bomb ride and are directed to the railway
station's shelter. After the bomb ride they search for Swedish
sailors who would help them get away to the neutral Sweden.
- They live
through an intense two days. Stettin (Szczecin) is also visited by an
Englishman Harry Day and a Pole Paweł Tobolski, wearing a Luftwaffe
uniform. Their only chance is the Pole's sister, who lives in
Stettin. „The Great Escape to the North” is a fictionalized
account of real events, brought to life with excellent acting,
keeping audience on the edge of their seats from the very start.
It
presents the heroic efforts of RAF pilots, inspired by their longing
for freedom.
One
of the rooms of the Szczecin Underground Routes is a preserved film
set from the movie „The Great Escape to the North”.
