Göttinger Garden under suspicion: This is how Wojtek Bolimowski lives!

Göttinger Garden under suspicion: This is how Wojtek Bolimowski lives!

Königsallee 21, 37083 Göttingen, Deutschland - Wojtek Bolimowski, a 71-year-old former concert master of the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, has lived in his garden on Königsallee in Göttingen for over 40 years. But his green oasis is under a shadow: an orange marking with number 21 indicates that a suspected area for a duddown from the Second World War is in his garden. Bolimowski only experienced this risk four years ago - a fact that turns his life and that of his neighbors upside down. According to the Göttingen Tageblatt, a total of six such suspicion areas are recorded in the Weststadt Göttingen, three of them are in the immediate vicinity of Godehardstrasse.

The explorations begin at the end of the month, and Bolimowski has prepared it conscientiously: his garden house is tidy up, the floor is upgraded to make it easier for experts to access. Although he requested aerial photos of his property, he could not discover a bomb crater on it, while neighbors report a crater on an adjacent property. His house, built in the 1920s, is reminiscent of another time - before the devastating bombing on Göttingen from 1943 to 1945.

The search for the blind passers

The situation is not only explosive for Bolimowski. According to information from Tagesschau, several dozen duds could be in the ground in Göttingen - estimates speak of up to 80 blind passers who are still hidden in the city. The upcoming probes concentrate in particular on the area around the Godehardkreisel in the Weststadt, where the holes started this week. Residents had to leave their houses by the end of June to ensure security because there is a safety radius of 50 meters around the suspicion. If a dud is found, he is treated by the ordnance disposal service, whereby controlled explosions are not excluded.

Special attention is paid to the detection and defusing of the unexploded, since many of them are equipped with long -term diverse. As explained on ARD Alpha, experts see a particularly dangerous task in defusing such explosive relics. Every year in Germany, around 5,000 duds have to be cleared, and the analysis of aerial photographs plays a decisive role in identifying these danger spots.

emotional attachment to the garden

Despite the tense situation, Bolimowski is calm. "I'm not afraid of the consequences," he says. During the exploratory work, he will be forced to leave his home, but plans to spend the time with friends. In addition to the physical danger that a dud is, Bolimowski is emotionally affected: his garden is his retreat, and it is difficult for him to imagine that he could possibly be destroyed. The city is covered by the city, but the restoration of his beloved garden will probably be an independent project.

The memory of the past remains alive, while the current situation Bolimowski and his neighbors present great challenges. In the face of these uncertainties, the city of Göttingen not only has to take care of the security of its citizens, but also to drive a bit away from the shadows of history.