Monday, August 31, 2015

Nazi Gold Train

Nazi Gold. Two words that conjure up hidden treasure, greed, the horrors of World War II, a Ludlum thriller, and which strike continued fascination, today, seventy years after the war. Old newsreel clips on Youtube show the Allies at war’s end in the Austrian salt mines recovering crates of gold wedding rings from Holocaust victims, gold bars, paintings of Rembrandt and Vermeer, treasures looted and hidden by the Nazi’s from all over Europe. Recovered treasure looted from the Third Reich that Hitler envisioned to become the Thousand year Reich. Given the sheer quantity of art and valuables pillaged by the Reich, one historian claims, it may take a thousand years to recover.
The stuff of legends? Maybe, yet a recent rumored ‘discovery’ of a Nazi gold train, buried in a tunnel in Poland either under a castle or in the mountains, has sparked treasure hunters, the curious, World War II buffs and the attention of the world to the Polish region near the border of Poland and Germany.
News came to light several weeks ago after two men, only identified as one Polish and one German, registered a finder’s claim which legally would entitle them to ten percent of the findings from a hidden Nazi gold train which they claimed to have discovered. As reported in the Telegraph UK “Since the end of the Second World War rumours and legends of a Nazi gold train that disappeared without trace in the dying days of the conflict have swirled around the town of Walbrzych, in south-west Poland. Stories put the train in the hills around the town, but despite many attempts to track it down it was never found – until now, it seems.”
Naysayers comments abounded; how could this be hidden for so many years, the logistics were impossible, who would leave gold and how could a long train be ‘hidden’. They insisted this was yet another fable of lost treasure.  Turns out, well-known to the residents of that region, that the Nazi’s used slave labor to build warrens of tunnels threading the mountains and construct rail tracks to these tunnels.
Geographically the area is near the border and convenient to Berlin. Theories abounded that the tunnels were used as storage for looted art and treasure, or more sinister claims of dangerous chemicals manufacturing.
But almost every day since the claim was registered in the Walbrzych town hall, a new turn in this story comes to light. A treasure hunting group insisted they had ‘discovered the location of the gold train’ under a hill two years previously. That the group mapped the location, stored the information on their computer and it was stolen. Hence, their claim should be rightful as the first discoverers. No proof of this has surfaced and one wonders why the group can’t remember the location which they said was on a four-kilometer stretch of the Wroclaw-Walbrzych main train line near Walbrzych. 

Rival treasure hunters, stolen maps, tunnels, castles, hidden Nazi gold. All the components for a historical thriller, right?
  Following that the town hall spokesman came out with a statement to the effect that since a finder’s claim was filed, all necessary actions were being taken to investigate this location and the procedure was complicated involving the fire department, heavy land moving equipment, experts at defusing munitions, rights to the property and access. This would all take a long time and involve cooperation on many levels. In the meantime the spokesman asked for what amounted to a plea to dissuade the rush of treasure hunters combing the area. The spokesman asked them to back off since they had no idea how dangerous the remains, if any, and their contents could be. The press was asked to wait for further announcements when they had information.

Now disgruntled treasure hunters complained over what they saw as a press blackout, how this reeked of a cover-up or it was a plot for tourism to bring visitors to this quiet region. "There are discrepancies between maps of the area from the 1920s and the 1940s which suggests there are tunnels under the town which have never been found," a local is quoted as saying. "Up to 1947 the Soviets were here and we do not know what they found."
The Ksiaz castle was being prepared for Hitler's arrival right up to the end of World War Two with a study and en suite lavatory installed for the dictator.
A comprehensive bunker complex based on the blueprint of the dictator's Berlin wartime base was also under construction when the fortress was overrun by Soviet troops in 1945.
Local politician Lukasz Kazek claims that just one third of the vast tunnel network built by the Germans during the Second World War, dubbed the 'Riese' project - German for 'giant' - have been discovered.
This story fascinated me. Every day a new aspect has been unfolding. I wondered why no residents of this area between the four-kilometer stretch of the Wroclaw-Walbrzych main train line near Walbrzych had been interviewed. Surely, if these gold train rumors existed since the war wouldn’t anyone still alive remember? Or their descendants recall hearing stories? Or had interviews and accounts occurred on Polish radio and didn’t make it to the international papers. Again, it intrigued me, and that thought of what if, the what if spark that triggers a story. What if the locals knew about this train and had kept quiet over the years because they had helped themselves long ago to the contents?
The could almost parallel my next book involving Nazi gold and a train through France. I’d done research concerning the Reich’s trains carrying gold from Switzerland, through France to Spain and their destination of Portugal. Documentation shows the Nazi’s paid Salazar, the dictator of Portugal, in newly minted bars of looted gold for Tungsten, also know as Wolfram the metal mined in Portugal needed to armor plate tanks. Salazar had wised up early in the war, refused Reich marks and demanded gold in payment. 
A hurdle in this transportation operation, that had to be surmounted again and again, was that the French rail tracks, the standard European gage-tracks and the Spanish broad-gage didn’t match.
Don’t to this today. The French train would stop at the ‘end’ of the line at the foothills of the Pyrenees, the contents in this case Nazi gold bars to pay Salazar, in order to be transferred manually to the Spanish trains waiting on their tracks at Canfranc, a Belle Epoque era train station. 

No forklifts then. And gold is heavy. Think of a five kilo bar, that’s a little over 11 pounds. If each box carried five bars, that’s 55 pounds requiring not one strong man but two. Think of hundreds of boxes with gold bars needing to be transferred. The villagers of Canfranc were enlisted for the work. 

In the journalist Ramon J. Campo’s exhaustively researched book, Canfranc, Gold and the Nazis, new revelations about the station’s old secrets emerge. According to Campo, 86 tons of gold passed through Canfranc. He describes border officials who loaded up on gold bars, people who got glimpses of paintings and clocks. The people in Canfranc who Campo met and interviewed knew the stories. Hence in my story, the gold headed for Canfranc plays a role.
During the war Nazi’s systematically looted works of art and cultural property from public and private collections in Europe with close to 80,000 objects confiscated in Poland alone. We know from historical documentation that a German army presence existed there all during the war and they headquartered at Ksiaz castle on a hill, close to Walbrzych, where you can lodge today.
You can also visit the tunnel underneath the castle built by Nazi slave labor.
  The saga continued yesterday in a startling announcement by Piotr Zuchowski, head of conservation for the Polish Arts Ministry, who revealed at press conference that a 90 year old man on his deathbed confessed to being involved the operation to hide the train 70 years ago.
The minister said he is now “99 per cent” that the train has been found, after seeing photographs of an object taken with ground penetrating radar.
“This is unprecedented. The train is over 100 metres long, and is armoured. We do not what’s inside but its armour indicates it has a special cargo,” said Mr Zuchowski. “There is probably military equipment but also jewelery, works of art and archive documents which we knew existed, but never found.” 
The identity of the dying 90 year old man, and the two treasure hunters remain part of the mystery still surrounding the train. Historians have warned that the train could be booby-trapped and the possibility that it contains toxic chemicals.

What do you think? 
Cara - Tuesday

18 comments:

  1. I, too, can't wait to see how this unfolds. Appropos of this story, I saw Woman in Gold recently. A tragic story with a happy ending. How many more of these will there be if the train is found?

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    1. Thanks for the information,they are really helpful for me. keep publishing such nice posts. You can also use the Kenmole

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  2. Fact maybe is stranger than fiction! Fascinating story, either way!

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  3. A fascinating story! And, I'm sure it will be a great book!

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  4. That's right, Caro! The latest updates yesterday were that the World Jewish Federation is interested in that if the contents belong to Holocaust victims it should go their heirs. The Russians have staked a claim having to do with their occupying Poland after the war and to top it off the Military have been called in since someone started a fire in the woods!

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  5. Ah, greed, the Great Driver of Drama. :-)

    Great story, Cara! Lost treasure is ALWAYS a great story hook!

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  6. I think it's already a terrific story, but one that will only get better once your hand gets ahold of it!

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  7. I can't take the train rumors seriously. No one has as of yet actually seen or photographed it. I hoped last year's rumors of crated Spitfire fighters buried in Burma were true, and got burned on that one!

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  8. Jim, I think a lot of people are in your camp of not taking it seriously! They sure have not found or shown any proof. And yet, a whiff of hidden Nazi gold pulls the treasure hunter buried in some of us to the what if I could find it.
    I'm going to Krakow in October...but only in the Salt mines:)

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  9. Cara, I am also working on the Nazi gold angle for an upcoming book. There was a triangle trade in looted gold - since the Germans were using both gold taken from concentration camp inmates and gold stolen from the Dutch and Belgian governments, among other thefts, nations such as Portugal didn't want to accept direct gold payments (or worthless Reichsmarks). So the obliging Swiss bankers set up a scheme - Swiss banks bought German gold and paid in Swiss francs, which the Germans then used to pay Portugal and other countries. As this was being done, the Swiss melted down the stolen gold and stamped the bars with Swiss stamps. Then Portugal would pay the Swiss banks with the Swiss francs and take the laundered gold. Of course, the Swiss took their cut and grew rich.

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  10. Comment from Lenny Kleinfeld:

    1) They're gonna find it. 2) It'll contain Hitler's collection of Hummel SS figurines

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  11. Ha. Lenny is pretty right on most of the time.

    Cara, I thought of you when I heard about the stories. Couldnt be more timely!

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  12. How come none of these people who claim to have found the train ever took a photo? This is the 21st century people. EVERYONE has a camera and we're living in an era where if you don't have photographic proof, you've got nothing.

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    1. The claim of the train being found is primarily based upon ground-penetrating radar that shows SOMETHING long and narrow. But no one has entered the tunnels yet. There's fear of instability, cave ins, bombs, gas, or other dangers. Or so the story goes...

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  13. Cara, for many years now, I have taken a keen interest in the Nazi looting of art in Europe. I HIGHLY recommend the book and the film--The Rape of Europa. I have seen the movie four or five times over the years. The recent movie The Monuments Men was based on it. Now I will seek out and watch my favorite Burt Lancaster film "The Train!" PLEASE update us on this from time to time.

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  14. Yes, Jim I found out about that too in Jean Zigler's, a Swiss, book
    The Swiss, the Gold, and the Dead: How Swiss Bankers Helped Finance the Nazi War Machine
    it boggles the mind but to the Swiss it was just business!

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  15. The movie, "Woman in Gold," about the Nazis theft of Klimt paintings from an Austrian Jewish family is good. Helen Mirren stars.
    It goes on to tell of her fight with the Austrian government which would not give up the paintings.

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  16. ACTUALLY... Wall Street was financing the nazis AND helping them fence stolen art and gold from dead jew's teeth until 1942...
    The usa has a lot to answer for.
    The usa has a lot of blood on its hands.
    THEN loom at the ASIAN gold bullion sent to the usa for 'safe keeping' to prevent it falling to Japan's hands... which the usa decided to keep and spend on itself!
    Your usa has a LOT to answer for!

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