Plac Zbawiciela, 1939; below right, a so-called tobruk bunker currently on show at the Warsaw Rising Museum

Workers repairing a tram line in central Warsaw have uncovered an intact German Nazi bunker dating from 1944 and curators have wasted no time in declaring an interest in the find, with the Museum of the Polish Army leading the bids to acquire the wartime relic.

“We are assessing the costs of extraction and transportation,” said Dawid Dziama, a spokesman for the museum told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

“Initially, we would like to exhibit it by our main building in Jerozolimskie Avenue. In the future it would be located at the Citadel Museum,” she said.

The defensive bastion, which was discovered on Plac Zbawiciela, belonged to an entire chain of bunkers built by the Nazi occupiers in late 1944.

The bunker was created following the Warsaw Rising, the doomed insurgency in which the Polish underground army attempted to overcome the Nazi forces.

In October 1944, once Hitler's forces had finished stamping out the 63-day rising, the Germans then had to prepare to face the advancing Soviet army. So a chain of defensive bunkers were built in a hurry.

A similar installation was discovered in 2004 under a parking lot in central Warsaw and was transported to the newly opened Warsaw Uprising Museum.

A decision by the City Conservator about the future of the find is expected over the next few days. (nh/pg)