IN SEARCH OF THE NAZI GOLD TRAIN
Tales of treasure hunters being “on the verge of finding” legendary hoards are all too frequent; news of anyone actually finding something, less so. Gold, jewels, art and unique treasures such as the Russian Amber Room allegedly stolen by the Nazis and stashed at the end of the war (see FT237:20-21) as they escaped are particularly popular.
In 2015 there was much excitement about the “Nazi Gold Train” a supposed armoured train full of gold and art that had been concealed in mine workings somewhere in the Owl Mountains in southern Poland (see ). Prompted by an alleged deathbed confession from someone involved in concealing the train, treasure hunters Piotr Koper and Andreas Richter carried out a search of abandoned Nazi tunnels with the support of Polish authorities. This produced an anomaly on ground-penetrating radar that prompted the pair tothe mine, apart from a plan to build a replica of the train nearby as a tourist attraction. This appears not to have materialised either, but Koper was back in the news in July 2021, having once again found what he believes is the Nazi Gold Train, this time at the bottom of a lake. He announced that his team had used ground-penetrating radar, bottom sonar, an underwater drone and a proton magnetometer to find indications of steel that could be the train at the bottom of a lake in the Polish village of Zarska Wies. He enlisted the services of famed Polish diver Marcel Korkus to investigate, but the result was once again disappointing; Korkus emerged from the lake and said he could “confirm the existence of a lime kiln in the northwestern part of the body of water”, but was unable to say whether the train was lying beneath the sediment, although he believed it “unlikely”.
