Warsaw’s Office for the Protection of Monuments has given a permission to Polskie Koleje Państwowe (Polish State Railways) to demolish the bunkers built by Germans during World War II. The officials decided that these military shelters do not possess any historical value.
The permit for demolition was given in connection to construction and modernisation of the railway between Warsaw’s West and Gdańska stations. This includes restoration of 19th-century stone pillars of the overpass at Obozowa street but also demolition of five military shelters located along the line. According to the local activists the bunkers are part of Warsaw’s cruel history and as objects of art and works of defence construction they fall under the definition of a monument and thereby are protected by law. The bunkers are a Ringstand 58c type construction, a mass-produced military shelter mounted by Germans all around occupied Europe. In Warsaw they were built as part of Festung Warschau – a Nazi plan to change the city into a fortress by erecting two rings of such bunkers around the city. Of planned 600 in the outer ring they managed to erect only 59. To this day only over a dozen remained preserved.
(after Wyborcza & Kuba Atys)