Original subtitles

Narrator: Four huge scaffolds

Dominating a remote alaskan mountain.

Meigs: These structures don't look super technological.

They're like giant billboards.

But, they were part of what was, in its day,

The most sophisticated technology we had.

Narrator: A war-torn ruin, left standing

In the shadow of north korea.

Nusbacher: If you went into the building,

You would, quite possibly,

Come out in a box.

And if you came out upright,

You might come out shattered beyond sanity.

Narrator: A medieval castle that became the playground

Of a vengeful killer.

Auerbach: So, either the bloody countess

Was a stone-cold mass murderer of young girls,

Or she was a powerful, but innocent woman,

Framed by her unscrupulous rivals.

♪

Decaying relics,

Ruins of lost worlds,

Forged through years of toil,

Now haunted by the past.

Their secrets waiting to be revealed.

-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

Captions paid for by discovery communications

♪

Narrator: Slovakia in central europe,

60 miles from the capital city.

Here lies a castle and the scene

Of one of the bloodiest scandals of 17th century europe.

Barratt: Looking up onto the hillside,

Clearly, man has made its mark here

In a very fortified, defensive kind of way.

Auerbach: It doesn't seem big enough to be a fort

And, dare I say it,

It's not grand enough to be a palace.

Narrator: Two towers loom over the grounds.

One leads into a 10-foot-deep pit.

Auerbach: It's a hole in the ground.

It looks like a dungeon.

Narrator: The other tower is reduced

To just one perilous standing wall.

Barratt: This isn't just nature that's destroyed this.

There's been some kind of deliberate effort to.

Narrator: The perimeter walls, lined with canon battlements,

Suggest a violent past.

Auerbach: If you're expecting uninvited guests,

This is the perfect spot to be.

It looks like it's ready for an attack.

Narrator: The events that took place here became folklore,

Then legend --

A reminder that history is written by the victors.

It's the year 1610

And echoing from the basement of the castle

Are the most blood curdling screams.

Young women are suffering unbearable torture

At the hands of a psychopath.

Narrator: Marcela bednarova grew up hearing

The stories of the castle.

Selwood: The girls were made to stand naked

In the cold cellar for days.

Auerbach: The rumors surrounding this place

Are extremely disturbing,

And we don't know exactly what happened here,

But everyone who knows something about this place

Agrees that it was terrible.

Narrator: This is cachtice castle,

Originally built in the 13th century

To defend the border of the hungarian empire.

For generations, the castle was traded

Between warring noble families until 1604

When a countess called elizabeth báthory

Changed the castle and the town forever.

When elizabeth, in her early 40s as a widow,

Moved full-time into the castle,

She must've appeared unbelievably glamorous

To the local villagers with their hard lives.

She had this sort of youthful glow about her.

Narrator: Elizabeth inherited the castle upon the death of her husband,

A member of the powerful nádasdy family.

She inherited all of his property and suddenly,

She was the head of a wealthy, noble household,

Possibly one of the most powerful single women

In hungary at the time

In a period when women were largely treated

As second-class citizens.

Narrator: As countess of cachtice,

Elizabeth invited young women into these rooms

To sweep the floors and cook her meals.

Barratt: In her 40s, she's there

Offering a school, basically,

For other young noblewomen.

It wasn't uncommon. It was a normal thing to do --

To go and live with another family

And learn how to housekeep,

How to prepare for marriage and life ahead.

Narrator: But events were about to show the true cruelty

Of the 17th century hungarian nobility.

Auerbach: Rumors started to circulate --

The girls who went to cachtice castle

Didn't always come back.

Narrator: On December 29, 1610,

A squad of soldiers stormed through the castle gate

And searched the grounds.

Selwood: One of them was already dead,

But the other still had just enough life force

To point the finger at her killer, elizabeth.

Narrator: The young widow may have been a woman in a man's world,

But she also had a reputation for barbarism.

Auerbach: It's said that she physically hurt her students

For minor infractions,

Like folding the sheets wrong or spilling water,

Even for just looking at her the wrong way.

Barratt: The punishments ranged -- well, the stories say --

Everything from just a slap around the face

To drawing blood,

And then it got more and more gruesome.

Supposedly, she would prick them with sewing needles.

She bit them until she drew blood.

She smeared honey on them

And exposed them to bees and ants.

Cut them with scissors.

Scald them with hot metal bars.

Leaving girls out in the cold to freeze to death.

Narrator: And one of her most notorious acts

Happened inside the castle's dungeon.

Auerbach: The girls were made to stand naked

In the cold cellar for days.

When they were let out,

Some of them could barely even walk,

And they were killed very soon afterwards.

Selwood: It's said that elizabeth báthory

Killed up to 600 young girls.

She literally has a guinness world record for it.

Narrator: The rumors of elizabeth's savagery

Go all the way back to her childhood.

She came from a family notorious for its alcoholism,

Incest, and sexual deviancy.

When she was young, she suffered from terrible migraines,

Which her family diagnosed as demonic possession.

It's said that she even bathed in the blood of her victims.

That might explain the youthful complexion.

Narrator: With the finger pointed at the countess,

The soldiers arrested elizabeth.

She was tried and banished to her castle tower

For the rest of her days.

The tyranny of the bloody countess was over.

But not everything is as it seems

In this grim fairytale.

♪

Narrator: In 17th century hungary,

A countess is imprisoned for murder,

Giving rise to a legend.

But while the dungeon lies at the heart of this story,

Something remains amiss.

There's one thing that doesn't quite add up here.

Out of an alleged 600 or more

Victims of elizabeth,

We haven't found a single grave

Or a single skeleton.

Nothing.

The man who arrested her and found all the bodies,

Just so happened to be head of a rival house

In the neighboring province,

Which is unreliable and suspicious.

Elizabeth was clever, she was literate,

She could speak four languages,

But she was also a woman

And a missive target on her back.

Selwood: Looking at this as a lawyer,

Despite concerns over the evidence,

I can't help but think

That there was something ghastly going on in that castle.

It's very rare that there's any smoke without fire.

So, either elizabeth báthory,

The bloody countess,

Was a stone-cold mass murderer of young girls,

Or she was a powerful, but innocent woman,

Framed by her unscrupulous rivals.

We may never know for sure.

♪

Narrator: The castle stood for another 100 years,

Until it was sacked in a rebellion.

What remains is now open to tourists,

Seeking to learn about the legend

Of elizabeth báthory.

♪

In the remote northwest of alaska,

A cluster of constructions loom

Over a barren landscape.

♪

Only 150 miles from russia,

Sit these curved, steel monoliths

On the crest of anvil mountain.

Meigs: There's not a tree, there's not a -- barely a bush,

And rising up on the top of this hill

Are these four huge structures.

They almost look like some warped salvador dali idea

Of a billboard.

Nusbacher: It's almost like they've left

A segment of a modern art museum,

Propped up by

Some kind of scaffolding,

Right here in the middle of nowhere.

Narrator: Their simple form

Belies their once crucial function.

It was very top secret. I mean, it was high, you know,

High security up there

Because this was all cutting-edge technology.

When you think about it for a second, it's clear,

It's some sort of communication device.

Whether it's for radar or microwaves or something,

But it's not clear what exactly.

♪

Richard beneville is the mayor of the nearby town of nome,

And this site holds a particular resonance for him.

Sometimes I feel like it's walking among the pyramids.

I'm very proud sometimes of what mankind can do.

I feel a sense of pride.

I know that this site worked.

Narrator: Their need can be traced back to the 19th century

When alaska became american property,

A time when russia and the u.S. Were allies.

At the time that the u.S. Purchased alaska from russia,

It was a very good investment.

I don't think anybody anticipated

That russia would become our biggest geopolitical foe.

Narrator: In 1949, the soviet union shocked the world

When it detonated its first atomic bomb

At a test site in kazakhstan.

The fear of soviet attack

Was now palpable through the cold war era.

I knew, every night I went to bed,

That the planes on the flight line

Had the bombs in them 24/7,

Ready to go in about a five-minute notice.

That was the cold war

To this 18-year-old kid.

Narrator: But back in the 1950s, the problem in alaska

Was how to communicate an incoming threat

And respond accordingly.

If your radar detected

Soviet bombers

On their way to bomb america,

You'd want to tell somebody right away.

And the problem here

Was that all they had

Was old-fashioned copper-wire telephone technology.

Meigs: There's no roads over most of the state.

There's no telegraph wires. There's no telephone wires.

At one point, from nome,

They could only send one telephone call at a time.

Somara: Huge distances made communication difficult.

Even high frequency signals would fizzle out

When the northern lights appeared.

Narrator: Telecommunications function strictly by line of site,

So the rapid transmission of information

Over long distances was impossible.

A new communications infrastructure was imperative,

But what technology could effectively deal

With this latest threat?

♪

Narrator: Near nome in northwest alaska

Are four confounding structures

Brought in during the cold war,

To deal with a communications black hole.

Alaska has a really interesting place

In the history of the cold war

Because it is so close to russia

And it's so close to the north pole.

Auerbach: At the end of world war ii,

Alaska's defenses were focused on fighting

A southern foe,

Not one that was coming over the north pole.

Narrator: If soviet bombers came over the horizon,

There was no effective warning system in place.

A solution was found with this --

White alice --

A radio station with an extensive air force

Telecommunications network.

They were part of the dew line.

The dew line which collected information

Actually from the top of scotland

All the way across the north atlantic,

Iceland, greenland, canada,

Keeping track, keeping a radar net

Over the north pole.

Narrator: Their name is widely believed to be an acronym --

White for the snow-covered location

And alice, which stands for

Alaska integrated communications and electronics.

A typical white alice site consists of four dishes,

Grouped in pairs,

To receive and transmit signals

To and from neighboring stations.

Since they couldn't just send a radio signal in a straight line

To the next receiver -- it was too far away --

They would aim it up at an angle into the sky,

Where it would bounce off a layer of the atmosphere --

It would bounce of the troposphere --

And then come back down hundreds of miles away

And be received at the other end.

Narrator: The system is called

Forward propagating tropospheric scatter.

Tropospheric scattering has many advantages

Over other technologies

Because bouncing signals off the atmosphere

Means that the hubs don't need a clear line of site,

Which is particularly advantageous

In the mountainous regions of alaska.

This process meant that white alice sites

Could be 200 miles apart.

They could also handle multiple phone calls at the same time

And, crucially for the military,

They were secure.

A transmission beamed from one spot

Could only be received

At another precise spot,

And that made it virtually impossible to intercept.

Narrator: This network of linked sites

Would be crucial for the various cold war threats.

Meigs: Across northern alaska,

There were a whole range of stations,

Designed to detect, first, incoming bombers and then later,

As missiles became a bigger threat,

Radar systems to detect

Whether missiles had been launched

And were headed to the heartland of the u.S.

Narrator: The 31 original white alice sites

Took three years to build,

With the first station operational in 1956.

But constructing these vast antennas was no easy task.

Beneville: We're about 700 miles to the nearest highway.

We're about 750 miles from anchorage.

So, we are way out there, right where

The bering straight and russia almost meet.

Meigs: So, to build these installations,

They had to not just fly in equipment,

They used dog sleds.

They were really out there

In primitive, brutal conditions.

The enemy was time and weather.

Hundreds of tons of metal had to be brought in by air.

This was a steel jigsaw puzzle

That had to be assembled quickly and effectively

And had to be strong enough

To withstand the extremes of alaskan storms.

Narrator: It was the latest and most sophisticated

Telecommunications technology in the world.

The u.S. Even connected hawaii and the philippines

Through the pacific scatter system.

But the biggest impact was on alaska itself.

It unified the region in ways

That no other technology could've done.

Narrator: However, construction was extremely expensive.

The total bill came to a staggering $300 million.

Somara: Initially, they thought they needed six people

And 25 kilowatts to operate the site.

But actually, in the end, they needed 20 people

And about 120-180 kilowatts of electrical power

Just to operate the system.

Narrator: Before white alice was even complete,

A new technology arrived to replace it.

It's a bit ironic that, by the time white alice

Was becoming operational

In 1957, 1958,

Sputnik was up in the sky.

Satellite communications came in

And that wound up being a much more reliable system

That didn't depend on these

Remote installations of antennas,

You know, manned by these small groups of guys,

Freezing their butts off on the tundra,

You know, year in and year out.

♪

Was it successful?

I think you'd have to say "yes"

Because it has allowed us to get to where we are today,

Which is a lot.

Narrator: White alice remained in use until the 1970s

As a civilian phone network

And in some cases, due to their secure nature,

The military still uses

Tropospheric scattering networks even today.

♪

At the northern-most limits of south korea

Is a troubled region,

Littered with the ruins of a conflicted past.

The demilitarized zone between north korea and south korea

Is actively dangerous.

This is not some historic relic.

There is almost a war going on

Across this piece of ground today.

Bell: From up on top of a hill, you can see into north korea

And this place is right in the shadow of that.

Narrator: Gutted and scarred,

This shell of a structure has a clear story to tell.

The building's not just derelict,

It's been completely devastated.

You can see that the only thing that's holding it in place

Is these modern reinforcement bars.

Bell: This isn't a place that was slowly left to decay.

It feels like this was a target.

Narrator: But while it dominates its surroundings,

It appears to be out of place.

Someone has taken

Some stalinist architecture

And dropped it

Right here on the korean border.

And because of that stalinist architecture,

You can tell

That this is a communist,

North korean edifice.

Why is it ruined,

And why is it here in south korea?

Narrator: Following years of japanese occupation,

At the end of the second world war,

Authority over the korean peninsula was split in two.

The soviets grabbed the northern half

And the americans,

Who were in the process of occupying japan,

Grabbed the southern half.

Bell: They divided the country up on the 38th parallel,

A line of latitude,

And this created a very crude

North-south border on the map.

Narrator: This building sits in the area of cheorwon,

Positioned just 40 miles above that line of demarcation.

Local resident mr. Kim grew up in this area,

His family having lived through the unrest

That soon followed the construction of this building.

[ speaking korean ]

Translator: This is the labor party building.

It's actually the cheorwon county branch

Of the labor party.

Kim: [ korean continues ]

Translator: When this area came under communist rule in 1946,

This was built as the local headquarters

For the communist government.

Narrator: Dominating the area,

This structure clearly set out the party's aim

Of commanding over the local people.

Kim: [ speaking korean ]

Translator: Now, this is a three-story building

While all the other buildings in the area

Were single-story, wooden structures.

Kim: [ korean continues ]

Translator: And it sits on top of a high platform.

The building was actually built upon a raised level,

So it must have looked very daunting for the locals here.

Kim: [ korean continues ]

Translator: This building epitomized the authority of communism.

[ korean continues ]

Narrator: But the north weren't only interested

In ruling over the local population.

They had ambitious plans for this place.

Kim: [ speaking korean ]

Translator: Cheorwon was the largest city

Near to the 38th parallel.

That's why they built the party headquarters here.

North korea ruled the surrounding area from here,

But they also used it to help prepare

For the attack on the south.

Narrator: The north's ultimate aim

Was to take control of the entire korean peninsula.

♪

Narrator: Near the border of north korea,

Stand the remains

Of the local communist party headquarters.

Now on the edge of the demilitarized zone,

It was once at the heart of the action.

Selwood: Cheorwon was an incredibly tense border town,

For the simple reason that it was a staging post

For the north korean troops.

So here, there would've been massed

A vast number of forces,

And that made this a very tense place.

Narrator: Backed by stalin,

At the head of this north korean communist regime,

Was kim il-sung.

Kim il-sung tries to replicate

Stalin's dictatorship

In north korea,

And that means that the north korean dictatorship

Is centralized,

Is brutal, and is ready

To repress the individual

In the interests of the state

And the ruling party.

Selwood: With the arrival of kim il-sung,

Who had served in the soviet army in the war,

Things really began to change and the peninsula

Went on to effectively a war footing.

Narrator: For those living in cheorwon,

Having the local party headquarters on their doorstep

Could be a terrifying proposition.

Old rumors of the internal goings on

Still persist to this day.

-[ speaking korean ] -back then, for the people here,

This was a very mysterious place.

Kim: [ korean continues ]

Translator: It's said that those people who opposed communism

Or the rules of the land

Were dragged in here to be tortured and killed.

Kim: [ korean continues ]

Translator: But the problem we face, looking at this today,

Is that the people who were responsible

For the atrocities here have all returned to the north.

Kim: [ korean continues ]

Translator: And there are no records left to confirm these stories.

[ korean continues ]

Narrator: Outside of this building, in the wider context,

Kim il-sung soon saw an opportunity

To assert his dominance over the whole peninsula.

In 1950, on the 25th of June,

The north korean army

Rolls across the 38th parallel,

Knocks the south korean army

Almost out of the way.

The northerners blazed their way down the peninsula,

In the end cornering the southern forces

Into just one small pocket.

Nusbacher: The south korean army,

The american occupation force,

They're all in one town,

In pusan in the south.

It looks like it's all over for south korea.

Narrator: With their backs against the wall

And a communist victory appearing likely,

U.S. Forces led by general macarthur

Set about turning the tables

With an invasion deep behind enemy lines.

Nusbacher: The other thing the united states does --

The united states internationalizes

The korean war.

The americans get the u.N. To come in

On the american and south korean side,

And they undo the successful

North korean invasion of the south.

Narrator: Quickly, southern forces regained control

And moved rapidly north,

Soon pushing past cheorwon.

But for those held prisoner here,

It was too late.

Nearby, the ruins of a water treatment facility

Now stand as a marker

To how those individuals met a tragic end.

[ speaking korean ]

Translator: So, after the war,

The bodies of many people were found here

And this has become a very harrowing place in cheorwon.

Nusbacher: The north korea leadership were very concerned

That in their retreat, they did not want enemies of the people,

As they called them, to survive.

Kim: [ korean continues ]

Translator: In cheorwon, there are a lot of scars left from the war,

But this is the place where numerous prisoners

And civilians were killed before the communist army

Were driven out and fled the area.

[ korean continues ]

Translator: This is a heartbreaking place

Which will never be forgotten by the people of cheorwon.

[ korean continues ]

Bell: The people they'd been holding prisoner

Down in the building in town,

Were brought to this other site,

Where they were murdered.

In total, around 300 people

Were killed in this massacre.

Narrator: With the war raging on,

The destruction of cheorwon crept ever closer.

And as the largest structure in the area,

This building would soon become a key target.

Hidden in plain site on the steps is the clue

To what would cause the final destruction of this site.

♪

Narrator: During the korean war, the area of cheorwon,

Near the 38th parallel,

Turned into a brutal war zone,

And in 1950,

As the southern forces advanced,

The old communist party headquarters

Became firmly fixed in the cross-hairs.

The violence of that time is clearly written

All across what remains.

Kim: [ speaking korean ]

Translator: These marks are from the tracks of a u.S. Army tank,

Which came up here to destroy the building.

[ korean continues ]

Translator: I think destroying the labor party building

Was intended as a show of strength.

This was the local headquarters of the north korean army,

Who were the enemy.

Narrator: While it defiantly remained standing,

This structure and the surrounding town

Soon faced an end game.

Just a few months after taking the area,

The southern forces were being pushed back, out of cheorwon.

Nusbacher: The one thing that you can't allow

Is this politically-important symbol

To fall into enemy hands.

So you burn the place to the ground.

The whole town burns, except for one thing --

That building that looms over the town.

Narrator: In 1953, an armistice was signed,

Ending the fighting,

And a new border was drawn up

Just a few miles to the north of this building.

♪

The ruins now serve as a reminder of the past

And a symbol of hope for the future.

[ speaking korean ]

Translator: We must not forget what needs to be remembered.

Also, it's a crucial task for the two koreas,

As one people, to reunify

And achieve prosperity together.

♪

♪

Narrator: In northern czechia,

Six miles from the border with germany,

Is a countryside haven with a sordid history.

Here is a lovely valley

With well-maintained woodlands --

No doubt, a clean stream running through it

And pretty towns at suitable intervals.

This is very much a czech valley

With all the signs

Of decades of happiness.

Narrator: In amongst the trees is a complex of buildings

That now lay empty.

Rooms take up entire floors

And there are hundreds of metal columns,

Keeping the ceilings up.

Something very heavy used to be kept on these floors.

Nusbacher: These were once grand,

Efficient factories of some kind,

And now they're abandoned, they're overgrown.

Why would you build something this expensive

And walk away from it?

Narrator: Behind the buildings are clues to a history

The locals would rather forget.

And rambling around through these woods

And past these buildings, we see a river --

You know, a water source -- we see smoke stacks,

So clearly, this was an industrial site of some sort.

Nusbacher: You can see the remains of a camp,

And you can see a big chimney next to that camp,

And that's never gonna be good news.

Narrator: And, at the center of it all,

Is a gateway that guards a terrible secret.

You arrive at this rock face,

And you see this huge metal door

Hiding something inside this rock face.

And you wonder, "well, that looks like a lot of security."

Narrator: What happened in this remote outpost

And what is behind that big, metal door?

♪

In the 19th century, a building was put here

To take advantage of a new wonder material.

Local author petr joza has explored every inch of the site.

Joza: [ speaking czech ]

Translator: We are in one of the halls of company franz preidel.

The building was constructed in 1867

As one of three in rabstejn valley

To produce cotton.

In this building, there were 16,000 spindles.

Individual spinning machines stood in between these pillars.

It was one of the biggest factories in this area.

Narrator: This is rabstejn jánská,

A factory that produced cotton on an industrial scale.

But this was more than a business,

It was the bread basket of a community.

Joza: [ speaking czech ]

Translator: There were several generations working in this factory.

[ speaking czech]

Translator: The factory was hugely beneficial

For the local economy

Because the company used the money they made here

To finance several things.

They had schools built in the area, had a chapel restored,

And that's all thanks to the profit from these factories.

[ czech continues ]

Narrator: But the factory's benevolent appearance

Is betrayed by an ominous feature within its grounds.

Then you see the big metal door

And you have to ask,

"what did you build here?

What are you trying to keep in the ground,

Or what are you trying to keep out?"

Somara: Inside this building, when you look closely,

You start to see clues

That this place might not have been so friendly, after all.

Narrator: In the early 20th century,

Business was booming at rabstejn jánská.

But in 1929, the market collapsed.

In the late 1920s,

A depression begins

All across central and eastern europe,

Which has devastating effects on manufacturing

And on the economies

Of eastern europe in general.

Hundreds of workers

Who relied on their jobs here for their livelihood,

They're all out of work.

Narrator: The old factory is shut down

And for over a decade, the buildings lay dormant.

But in 1942, the factory comes under new management --

The nazis.

♪

Narrator: At the height of world war ii,

A former countryside cotton mill

Was about to be assimilated

Into the nazi war machine.

And the germans had always looked kind of hungrily

At bohemia.

The germans, you know, first nibbled at the sudetenland

And then they take all of czechoslovakia

In the course of 1938, '39.

Narrator: The nazis occupy rabstejn jánská,

But they have different plans for the old factory.

Cotton production was low on the list of nazi priorities.

What they really needed more than anything was aircraft.

Narrator: Half a mile from the factory

Is what remains of the nazis' plan

To send aircraft production into overdrive.

The german economy has to be kept going,

And the german war machine has to be supplied.

And one of the ways the nazis do this

Is by conscripting people into labor.

Narrator: They constructed a labor camp.

Joza: [ speaking czech ]

Translator: We are at rabstejn concentration camp,

Which was established in 1944

For approximately 690 to 700 prisoners.

Joza: [ czech continues ]

Because they couldn't find enough workers,

Prisoners were brought here and the buildings

Were surrounded by barbed, electric wire.

[ czech continues ]

Narrator: Prisoners were marched from the camp

To the factory and back

In an unending, brutal cycle.

But events hundreds of miles away

Would turn this nightmare into a living hell.

Between the 20th and the 25th of February, 1944,

The allies bombed the hell

Out of nazi fighter plane production.

Translator: Germany definitely lost control over its own airspace,

So they established jaegerstab.

It was a task force

Designed to decentralize fighter aircraft production

And move it underground.

♪

The manpower required was huge.

Effectively, they treated people like slaves.

Digging those holes was nasty work.

They used dynamite and pick axes.

You wouldn't want that assignment.

Narrator: The nazis commissioned four tunnels to be dug

Into the rock face.

They blast almost 83,000 square meters of space,

Carved out of the rock

Underneath these old 19th-century textile mills.

Narrator: So desperate was the nazi air force

That they moved in factory machines

While prisoners kept digging.

Somara: The noise, the fumes, the lack of daylight --

It would've been like digging your own hell.

Joza: [ speaking czech ]

Translator: So, here we are at a shaft's crossing

Where, during excavation, part of the ceiling collapsed.

Joza: [ czech continues ]

Translator: Three prisoners from the concentration camp died

When the ceiling fell on them.

Joza: [ czech continues ]

They were essentially worked to death

In these underground factories.

Narrator: By January 1945,

Germany was months away from losing the war,

But the prisoners underground didn't know it.

People kept working, suffering, dying,

Not just for an evil cause

But for a lost cause.

Narrator: But just weeks before tanks roll into berlin,

The prisoners at rabstejn jánská

Get a glimmer of hope from above.

The first news they have that the war is almost over

And that they will probably survive the war,

Is in March of 1945

When a soviet plane flies overhead

And five paratroopers jump out

And land without any german resistance.

Narrator: Then, on may 8th, without warning or announcement,

The prison guards began to disappear.

The first they knew

That the germans who were holding them captive

Had lost the war, was when the german guards

Just didn't turn up for work that day.

The army was on its way to liberate them.

The nazis had taken off to avoid being captured.

-[ speaking czech ] -we're at the end of the shaft

Where you can see three rows of drilling for dynamite.

The demolition charges were placed in these and blasted.

They did not do it here

Because this is the place where excavating stopped

At the end of world war ii,

Because the second polish army arrived,

And the construction of the underground factory was stopped.

And all the laborers at rabstejn could do

Was put down their pick axes

And start trying to figure out how to get home.

♪

Narrator: Rabstejn jánská --

The factory that began in paradise

And ended in a nightmare.

Today, the factory buildings have been reclaimed

By the community that lives here.

The camp and the tunnels

Are locked away and left to crumble.