From Mallnitz to Kitzbühel

All summer we had been talking about making this trip but it wasn`t before yesterday we actually managed to do it. We got up early and prepared our stuff, made coffee and some fresh baked sandwiches, and set off for a short drive, ready to make a bit of a stroll.

We began in the bottom of a valley and our goal was a small section of the German defence system called the "Lyngen Line".

The walk took us along the route where the Germans brought equipment up to the mountain using horses, reindeers, an aerial tramway they constructed, and of course slave labour. Half hour into the stroll we found the second POW camp along this route (we missed the first one by the very bottom of the valley) "Lager Mallnitz".

This camp was erected towards Christmas in 1944 and held ca 160 Soviets from the Vlassov army until 16.April 1945.

From then on the camp were filled up with Red Army prisoners of war from other camps, and the camp turned into hell on earth and a true extermination camp. Now it housed 272 men of which only 67 survived until the liberation, and 25 more died in the hospital through the early summer.

The slaves died of starvation, sickness, medical injections, beatings and shootings, and the situation had for the prisoners become so bad that cannibalism occured.

After the liberation three massgraves were uncovered and later a fourth was discovered and it is still unsure if there are more graves hidden in the terrain around the camp.

Today there are still traces of the camp to be seen. One can see the dug outs of the earthen huts where a few ovens still stand, barbed wire being dragged up from the ground by younger birch trees and ironically some rusted food buckets can be seen in the undergrowth. We paid our respects to the ones who lost their lives here before we continued up towards the mountain.

A small food bucket.

The oven still standing in the earthen hut where the prisoners lived.

A fuel barrel made into a stove.

A bit farther we walked past the remnants of Lager Gastein, another POW camp. Here one can clearly see where many of its huts stood. There is little information to find about this camp. No bodies or graves were found here after the liberation but POWs loosing their life here might have been buried in the massgraves of camp Mallnitz, but probably there are graves hidden in the area.

Now we were about half way to our destination and a light rain and a chilly wind came over us, but as an old Norwegian saying goes "there is always a shame to turn back" we continued up the rocky path.

When the terrain flattened out after ca two hours walk, we had in front of us two small lakes and two small hills and a wonderful view. We took cover from the wind behind a shelter built up from rocks, and had lunch and coffee before we climbed the small hill covered with the remains of German bunkers made from prefabricated wooden frames, corrugated iron and rocks. The German fighting positions on top of the hill had been replaced by Norwegian/Nato bunkers during the cold war, but it clearly showed what great difficulties any attacker would face.

In the middle of the small mountain pass we were in we found the last POW camp in this section of the Lyngen Line, Lager Kitzbühl. There is also little information to find about this camp and its prisoners but one can see the foundations of several of the POW huts. This camp was the end station for the aerial tramway so the prisoners here probably worked with dragging equipment to different positions being constructed in the area. After the liberation the graves of 6 prisoners were uncovered and it is possible there is more of them hidden away.

We strolled around in the area for a while looking at the camp and the rusted metals and broken bottles littering the place before we realised darkness would soon fall and we had a long way down. Next year we ll get up here again earlier in the summer and then with a tent so we can spend some more time looking around as there is positions, shelters and bunkers all over the place.

We reached back to the car with the last bit of daylight, tired from a good long walk and filled with impressions of today and the dark past, and looked forward to be back home for a long shower and a big dinner :)

Enjoy the autumn my friends :)

Norwegian/Nato bunker part of what makes the "Fröy line".

In the middle of the photo stone circles show where the prisoners huts stood.

Great views.

The hillsides were covered with shelters.

Ruins of shelters and positions everywhere.

Rolls of barbed wire.

All sorts of stoves and ovens were dragged up the mountain side.

The entrance is still standing.

Time took back this hut.

Modern bunker.

In this area was the Kitzbühel camp.

This photo from the liberated Lager Kitzbühl was taken 9th June and gives a hint of the terrible conditions the POWs must have had.

The oven still lay in the middle of where the POW hut stood.

Large wooden huts where the prisoners lived stood here.

Barbed wire in big rolls.

More barbed wire and shovels.