There's a legendary Nazi treasure! 4-ton metal box found underground
3There's a legendary Nazi treasure! 4-ton metal box found underground
Treasure hunters digging for Nazi gold said they found a four-ton metal box that could contain legendary WWII treasure. Awaiting permission from the military due to the booby-trapped threat.
1.5 meters of the box, which is located approximately 3 meters below the ground.
It is thought to be 50 cm in length and 50 cm in diameter. The discovery was made using geo-radar scanning of an abandoned conservatory in an 18th-century palace in the village of Minkowskie in southern Poland.
The excavation, which started in May last year in the palace, which was used as a brothel by Hitler's SS, is expected to unearth 10 tons of gold as well as other valuables. The treasure was stolen towards the end of the Second World War, on orders from SS officer Heinrich Himmler to establish the Fourth Reich. The treasure is thought to contain the 'Breslau Gold' lost while in Wrocław, Poland. Breslau, then a German city, was one of the wealthiest in Hitler's Third Reich.
THEY MISSED THE RED ARMY LOOT
But the imminent arrival of the Red Army meant that the Germans had to hide tons of gold and valuables. According to legend, the treasure was collected in the building of the police station and stuffed in chests. He was then transported from Breslau, under the supervision of an SS guard, to present-day Jelenia Góra in Poland and then to the Sudeten mountains. However, he lost track of himself shortly after he set off, and the fate of this gold has been unknown since then.
The treasure is also thought to contain jewelry and valuables from the private collections of wealthy Germans living in the area, who handed over their goods to the SS to prevent plunder by the advancing Red Army. Roman Furmaniak of the Silesian Bridge Foundation, who led the search, said the geo-radar readings from the last search revealed 'anomalies', adding: "The first drill we did showed unnatural twists. We did a second probe and got the same result on the other side. "The probe hit an object. The shapes and colors show anomalies, i.e. human interference with the ground. The metal has a different density to the earth, which is shown as a darker color in the scans."
The location of the treasure was revealed through classified documents, an SS officer's diary, and a map that treasure hunters obtained from the descendants of officers belonging to a secret lodge 1,000 years ago. Among the documents is a letter written by a senior SS officer to one of the women who worked at the palace and later became his girlfriend. The officer wrote in his letter, "My dear Inge, by God's grace I will fulfill my duty. Some transfers have been successful. Here I entrust the remaining 48 heavy Reichsbank chests and all the family chests. Only you know where they are. God help me, help me and complete my mission."
The diary explains that the treasure contains 47 works of art of international importance believed to have been stolen from collections in France. The booty apparently includes works by Botticelli, Rubens, Cezanne, Carravagio, Monet, Dürer, Rafael and Rembrandt. Other valuables are said to include gold coins, medals, jewelry, which were given to the local Nazi police by wealthy people in the city for safekeeping.
The Silesian Bridge Foundation is now awaiting permission to bring the box to the surface. Permission from the military is also required, as the foundation says the hiding place may have been booby-trapped by SS officers. Another treasure in the palace is thought to have been put together by Himmler, who collected relics from around the world to find evidence for Hitler's racial theories. The palace at Minkowskie is the first of 11 sites in Lower Silesia identified in the penciled pages of the diary held by the Foundation, which leased the building for 10 years. "We are making preparations to start excavating at 10 other sites where we hope to find more. We are described as treasure hunters everywhere, but we don't want anything for ourselves," Furmaniak said last year. The purpose of the Quedlinburg Lodge, and hence the foundation, is to deliver this treasure to its beneficiaries in the name of world heritage and as atonement for the Second World War.