New hunt for lost Nazi treasures begins in Poland
Precious works of art. The fabled Amber Room of Russia’s Catherine Palace. Crates of gold. The hunt for lost Nazi treasure is back on in earnest.
The world looked on in excitement when, in 2015, a pair of German amateur historians claimed to have identified the location of a buried Nazi armoured train, filled to the brim with precious materials and legendary objects looted from Poland and Russia.
Suspiciously high-resolution underground scans “proved” the find.
But excavations found nothing.
Now, a Polish shipping radio technician and history enthusiast thinks he has the answer.
Jan Delingowski is convinced there is a secret, heavily camouflaged bunker buried near a former Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel) barracks near the town of Brusy in Poland’s Pomerania region.
“For the past decade, he has been conducting a private investigation to determine the location of a mysterious treasure taken from Königsberg at the end of the war,” the Polish Wprost news service reports.
Delingowski believes the Amber Room and a host of other treasures are sealed inside. And Poland’s Pomeranian Provincial Conservator of Monuments authority has permitted him to start digging.
Missing in action
One of World War II’s greatest mysteries is the fate of Russia’s greatest treasure: The Amber Room.
This 17-square-meter array of dazzling wall panels was commissioned by Frederick I of Prussia in 1701.
His successor, Frederick William I, presented it as a gift to Tsar Peter the Great in 1716.
Almost six tons of semitranslucent amber was combined in an ornate mosaic with precious stones and metals on gold-leaf backing. Known as the “eighth wonder of the world”, occupying Nazi forces packed the panels into 27 crates and carted them to the German city of Königsberg (now Russian Kaliningrad).
It was put on display in Königsberg Castle. But its curator was advised to remove the panels once Russian bombing raids began targeting the city. Whether or not this happened is uncertain.
But one mysterious exchange of messages between former Nazi officials has inspired decades of treasure hunters.
A series of telegrams sent to SS Obersturmbannführer Gustav Wyst shortly after the fall of the Third Reich talk of efforts in 1945 to move a cargo from Königsberg on the western Baltic coast to Berlin ahead of advancing Soviet troops.
It never arrived.
Instead, it had to be hurriedly hidden at a location code-named “BSCH”.
One recent search centred on the allegedly buried Nazi armoured train. Another involved “Project Riese (Giant)” – a mountain-bunker being built for Adolf Hitler near Ksiaz castle in Walbrzych, Poland.
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Delingowski has combined intercepted telegrams between Nazi SS officers shortly after World War II with a tale from an inmate imprisoned alongside a former Nazi official to identify what he claims to be the site of buried Nazi treasure.
And they’ve been spurred on by evidence that the Amber Room may have survived.
In 1997, German authorities were tipped off that someone was attempting to sell what they claimed to be a part of the famous artwork. They raided an office in Bremen where they found one of the mosaic panels.
No further information was forthcoming. The seller was the son of a soldier. And he said he had no idea how his father had obtained it.
Now, Delingowski has told a Polish YouTube history channel “dedicated to the extraordinary mysteries of history, the exploration of abandoned places, and the mysteries of World War II” that he knows where it is.
SS Seluth
Poland, like many occupied countries, is still seeking thousands of artefacts taken from its museums and private collections by the SS. Much of this was assembled in the remote Polish city of Berlinka for safety.
For its part, Germany is seeking the return of some 300,000 books, drawings and manuscripts – known as the Berlinka collection. This includes original handwritten music by Mozart, Beethoven and Bach that had been evacuated to Berlinka for protection.
Delingowski says SS Obersturmbannführer Wyst’s treasure also ended up in Poland.
He says he learned of the bunker’s existence from a former inmate of Poland’s notorious Barczewo prison. Established by Germany’s Gestapo during World War II, it was later used to house war criminals.
One of these prisoners was Erich Koch, Germany’s Supreme President of East Prussia during the war. He had been found guilty of assisting the Nazis in murdering about 400,000 “undesirable” Poles.
Koch was sentenced to death. But this was never carried out.
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Delingowski has convinced Poland’s Pomeranian Provincial Conservator of Monuments to allow him to excavate what he believes is a secret bunker buried on the site of a former SS training facility.
“According to records from the Institute of National Remembrance, the Polish People’s Republic Security Service and the KGB hoped that the Germans would reveal the location of valuable assets, including the missing Amber Room,” Wprost reports.
Delingowski claims Koch told a fellow inmate about the fate of a treasure shipment from Berlinka shortly before he died in the 1980s.
That inmate then told Delingowski the story.
“According to the prisoner’s account, Koch revealed that art, jewellery, and Nazi gold were loaded onto trucks destined for Berlin but were diverted near Czersk and CzÅ‚uchów,” Delingowski said.
The high-security Brusy SS camp had been a training facility for rocket technicians. These were destined for a top-secret V2 ballistic missile project at the nearby Heidekraut testing ground in the Tuchola Forest.
Delingowski believes that “BSCH” stands for “Bruß Schutzraum”— a mound alongside a lake located within the former SS facility.
Polish news reports state subterranean radar surveys have identified “anomalies consistent with a concealed bunker”. Supervised excavations are due to start in August.
“Our goal is to uncover the truth behind these stories while protecting this historic landscape,” said a spokeswoman for the Pomeranian conservator.
