Work Begins to Retrieve Nazi Gold Train Believed to Contain Lost Amber Room of Charlottenburg Palace

Ancient Origins

Two months ago, headlines were made around the world as treasure hunters identified a legendary Nazi train packed with weapons, gold, money, and archives hidden in a long-forgotten tunnel in the Polish mountains. It is believed that the train may also contain the long-lost Amber Room of Charlottenburg Palace, an early 1700s room crafted from amber, gold, and precious jewels, estimated to now be worth $385 million. This week, engineers will begin surveying the site to determine how the possibly booby-trapped armoured train can be retrieved.
Poland’s Culture Ministry announced that the location of the Nazi train was revealed to Piotr Koper of Poland and Andreas Richter of Germany, through a deathbed confession. The Telegraph reported that two treasure-hunters found the 100-meter-long armoured train and immediately submitted a claim to the Polish government – under Polish law treasure findings can keep 10 per cent of the value of their find. The Polish Ministry have confirmed the location of the train using ground-penetrating radar.
The train is said to be located in an underground tunnel constructed by the Nazis along a 4km stretch of track on the Wroclaw-Walbryzch line. However, its exact location is being kept hidden, not least because it is believed to be booby trapped or mined and will need to be investigated through a careful operation conducted by the Army, Police and Fire Brigade.
The Guardian reports that work is now underway to plan exactly how that operation will be carried out.  Experts will be using magnetic field detectors, thermal imaging cameras and radars to begin a non-invasive search of the ground. Digging and drilling are not permitted until this initial testing phase is complete.

“Since August, the Polish military has cleared vegetation from an area the size of a football pitch,” The Guardian reports. “Soldiers have swept for mines and analysed the ground for the presence of poison gas.”

An underground tunnel, part of Nazi Germany "Riese" construction project under the Ksiaz castle in Poland (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland / Flickr)

Nazi Treasure

Legend has it that the Germans hid their looted treasures from the advancing Soviet Red Army as insurance policies to help fleeing war criminals escape and set up new lives at the end of WWII.
While government officials have said that they don’t know the exact contents of the Nazi train, Piotr Zuchowski, a vice minister for conservation, told Poland’s Radio Jedynka that its contents are “probably military equipment but also possibly jewellery, works of art, and archived documents,” Yahoo News reports. An announcement by the Polish Ministry speculated that it may also contain the missing Amber Room, which was dismantled by the Nazis from Charlottenburg Palace near St Petersburg in 1941.

The Amber Room

The Amber Room was originally installed in Charlottenburg Palace, the home of Frederick I, first King in Prussia in 1701. During a state visit to Prussia, the Amber Room caught the eye of the Tsar of Russia, Peter the Great. Seeing an opportunity to gain the favor of the Tsar of Russia, Frederick I presented the Amber Room to the Tsar in 1716 in order to cement the newly-formed Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden. The Amber Room was dismantled and shipped to Russia in 18 large boxes, where it was installed in the Winter House in St. Petersburg as part of a European art collection. In 1755, Tsarina Elizabeth had the Amber Room moved to Charlottenburg Palace, where it remained until it was dismantled and stolen by the Nazis in 1941 and sent to Königsberg’s castle museum.
Although the Amber Room was on display for the following two years, the war not going well for the Germans, and the museum’s director, Alfred Rohde, was advised to dismantle the room and crate it away. Less than a year later, Allied bombing raids destroyed the city of Königsberg, and the castle museum was left in ruins. After that, the trail of the Amber Room simply vanished.

A reconstructed segment of the Amber Room (Wikipedia)

The original Amber Room, 1931 (Wikipedia)

Many believed that the Amber Room was safely hidden by the Germans prior to the destruction of the castle museum and thus, there have been many attempts to track down this treasure, all of them unsuccessful.
If the newly-discovered Nazi gold train does indeed contain the pieces of the world-renowned Amber Room, it will see the return and reconstruction of a valuable slice of history.
Featured image: An underground tunnel, part of Nazi Germany "Riese" construction project under the Ksiaz castle in Poland (public domain). Inset: Reconstruction of the Amber Room (Patricio Rodriguez / flickr).
By: April Holloway

Gas chambers unearthed at demolished Nazi concentration camp

Archaeologists uncover previously hidden ruins at Sobibor death camp in Poland, which was razed after a 1943 uprising

Archeologist Anna Zalewska works among the brick walls thought to be the ruins of gas chambers at the Sobibor camp. Photograph: Kacper Pempel/Reuters

Archaeologists working at the site of the Nazi concentration camp at Sobibor, in eastern Poland, say they have uncovered previously hidden gas chambers in which an estimated quarter of a million Jews were killed.
German forces tried to erase all traces of the camp when they closed it down after an uprising there on 14 October 1943. The Nazis demolished the gas chambers and an asphalt road was later built over the top.
Archaeologists excavated beneath the road and found lines of bricks, laid four deep, where they believe the walls of the gas chambers used to stand.
They have been able to establish how big the chambers were, information they said would help build up a more precise picture of how many people were murdered at the camp.
"Finally, we have reached our goal – the discovery of the gas chambers. We were amazed at the size of the building and the well-preserved condition of the chamber walls," said Yoram Haimi, one of the archaeologists.
Haimi said two of his own uncles, who had been living in Paris during the war and were rounded up by the Germans, were among those killed at Sobibor.
The archaeologists said that among the personal items they had found buried near the gas chambers was a wedding ring which carried the inscription, in Hebrew: "Behold, you are consecrated unto me."
A golden ring inscribed in Hebrew which was unearthed by archaeologists at Sobibor. Photograph: Kacper Pempel/Reuters Historians say that because the Germans razed the camp, and because so few of those detained there came out alive to give testimony, there is less information about how Sobibor operated and the scale of the killing than there is for some other concentration camps.
The Polish archaeologist Wojciech Mazurek, who has also been involved in uncovering the site, said the excavations revealed there were eight gas chambers.
"The extermination of people took place there; murder by smoke from an engine that killed everyone within 15 minutes in these gas chambers, in torment, shouting," he told Reuters Television.
"It is said that … the Nazis even bred geese in order to drown out these shouts so that prisoners could not have heard these shouts, these torments."
According to Israel's Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research, the 1943 uprising was organised by Jewish civilians at the camp and Jewish officers in the Soviet army who had been taken prisoner and sent to Sobibor.
About 300 people escaped, but most were caught and killed. Those who did not take part in the breakout were also killed. At the end of the second world war, about 50 escapees were left alive.
The research project at Sobibor is being carried out in coordination with the Yad Vashem institute, the German-Polish Foundation, and the Majdanek State Museum, near the Polish city of Lublin.

theguardian