At the beginning of May 2020, we received a tip from a friend that there were “a few abandoned brick buildings somewhere on the moor”. She had found them on a walk. Well okay. So we had a quick look on Google Maps, and lo and behold - there were actually a few walls in a swampy wooded area. As we couldn't make out exactly what they were, we set off to have a look around. We only had to drive for about half an hour to get close to the location. As there is an allotment site opposite the forest, we parked a little further away and set off. When we arrived at the woodland, we could immediately see a massive brick wall. The fence separating the site from the road had been kicked down so far that it was almost non-existent, so we had little hesitation in looking around further.
The brick wall was just that - just a wall. A very thick brick wall. There was a passage to the other side, and from there it was immediately clear what it was: a military firing range. The wall was the bullet trap, and behind it the earth walls of the range were clearly visible. The fact that the bullet trap was made of bricks and not concrete indicated that the firing range had not been built during the Second World War, but probably in Prussian times.
However, a concrete wall next to the old shooting range indicated that it had been extended and also used during the Third Reich.
We did not inspect the concrete wall more closely as it marks the boundary to the neighboring property, from which some chickens had already escaped into the area of the shooting range during our visit and we feared that the owner would catch us trying to collect them again.
The brick walls, however, were very interesting in themselves. They were quite damaged from the shelling (and presumably 80 years of weathering) but made for an interesting sight.
More on a silly whim, I said I'd see if I could find anything else, bent down and dug around in the rubble - and after less than 30 seconds found a piece of stone with a bullet embedded in it!
Unfortunately, the lanes themselves were very boggy - the whole area is a bog, and the weather in the weeks before had been very wet, so the whole place was more than just muddy.
As we made our way back to the car at the end of our exploration, we saw that there was a man working on the neighboring property. The appearance of both the man and the property indicated a certain hermit, prepper and self-sufficient mentality - a combination that is not necessarily conducive to communication after illegal trespassing.
We tried anyway, introduced ourselves nicely and asked if he could tell us anything about the property next door. When he said that it was his property, we apologized for trespassing and told him about the broken fence. He said that teenagers destroyed that fence so often that he doesn't even want to fix it anymore. He seemed to be okay with us trespassing on the old shooting range, but "complained" a bit that we hadn't brought the escaped chickes with us.
Then he told us something that sent a chill down our spine:
The shooting range wasn't just a shooting range - during World War II, it had also been an execution site, where forced laborers, deserters and other delinquents were executed. Often the bodies of the victims were not even taken away, but simply buried in the earth walls of the range. Apparently, these bodies have never been removed. For this reason, he said, these walls are listed as historical monuments. He also spoke of a memorial stone that apparently has sunk into the bog over the years.
He then mentioned that there should be a sort of bunker on the premises that he hadn't discovered yet.
We can't say if anything of what he said is true - but fact is that we couldn't find any information regarding the old shooting range. Public information is often withheld to keep the "wrong people" away - and possibly in this case to keep them from literally digging up the bones from the past.
In any case, we had an interesting talk with the guy - of course not without the tirade against the current government that is quite common in these circles. A price that we had expected to pay when we started the conversation.
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