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Around Poland
Pozezdrze - Himmler’s secret HQ
The village of Pozezdrze (Possessern in German) has a very little known secret. To the north of the village lies the former HQ of Heinrich Himmler, a complex of bunkers which today are lost in the forest. Only one bad sign shows what once was here but this could be the place where much of the Shoah was planned together with many of the crimes that Himmler and the SS perpetrated.
Located some 65km by road from Ketrzyn (Rastenburg), Himmler would have been here when his Fuhrer was at Rastenburg. And Hitler spent around 800 days in Rastenburg after 24 June 1941.
It seems logical therefore to believe that the decisions relating to the mass murder of the Jewish population of Europe were not made in Berlin but here, lost in the forest.
The village of Possessern had its name changed to GrossGarten in 1938 by the Nazi authorities. Its population was then around 1,550 people, today it is around 1,300.
Himmler’s HQ is very difficult to find in the forest. Finding it, I felt like an explorer who came across the pyramids in the Yucatan.
An utterly amazing complex, lost in the forest and unprotected from the elements it is falling into even more ruin.
To the south of the village there is a military cemetary from the first world war with dead from the battles fought in this part of what was then East Prussia.
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