나찌가 폴란드에 숨겨 놓은 '황금열차' 수색 본격 착수 Is Nazi gold train mystery about to be solved? Polish soldiers FINALLY start digging (but they'll only excavate a metre and it's eight metres down)
Is Nazi gold train mystery about to be solved? Polish soldiers FINALLY start digging (but they'll only excavate a metre and it's eight metres down)
Army move in on site in Walbrzych, Poland, as they prepare to start digging
Spokesman said they will dig a metre into the hill where it's said to be buried and report back
Legend claims that the train is packed with cash and jewels and abandoned by the Nazis in 1945 as they lost in the Second World War
But treasure hunter who 'discovered' train says it's pointless because mysterious object is at least 2.4 metres underneath the ground
폴란드 육군의 보물 수색팀은 바우브지브 현장으로 이동해 황금열차가 묻혀있다는 언덕지역의 굴착 작업 준비를 마쳤으며 약 1m를 파내려갈 것으로 알려졌다.
전해 내려오는 이야기로 2차세계대전 중 없어지고 1945년에 나찌에 의해 폐기됐던 그 기차에는 현금과 보석이 가득차 있다고 한다.
그러나 자칭 그 기차를 발견했다고 주장하는 보물 탐사자들은 최소한 2.4m 밑에 있을 것이라고 말하고 있다.
by Ki Chul Hwang
Conpaper Editor Distributor
황기철 콘페이퍼 에디터
[관련기사]Related Article
http://conpaper.tistory.com/32796
http://conpaper.tistory.com/32813
By ED WIGHT IN WALBRZYCH, POLAND, FOR MAILONLINE
The mystery surrounding the Nazi gold train said to have been hidden in a hillside 70 years ago is finally set to be solved as soldiers have cleared the site to start digging.
But already the dig has been dismissed as a 'waste of time' by the treasure hunters who allegedly found it because they will only excavate a metre down when whatever is buried there is said to be at least eight metres underneath the surface.
Dozens of troops arrived at the site Monday after police erected metal barriers and posts to keep curious passers-by away.
The troops from the 1st Regiment of Engineers, descended on the spot in Walbrzych, south-west Poland, where two men, Piotr Koper and Andreas Richter, said they had located the train using ground penetrating radar.
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Digging: The Polish army arrived on Monday to begin digging down to find the mysterious 'Nazi gold train'
Secretive: The area has been sealed off to prevent people getting too close during the six day dig
Speaking at a press conference Monday afternoon, military spokesman Artur Talika said the soldiers would begin searching the area for possible mines and radiation leaks from suspected chemical weapons.
He added that the soldiers would dig one metre below the surface and the entire operation would last six days.
The army will then present its findings to the local authorities who will then make a decision about what to do next.
But one of the men who claims to have found the train has dismissed the operation because, he said, they won't dig far enough down.
Pole Koper told reporters: 'The military examination just one metre down is pointless. The train is about eight metres down. They will not find anything.'
He added that he and Richter had found the train three years ago and had also worked out how to extract it from the ground.
He said: 'We have spent much time examining the logistical problems and worked out a solution for getting the train out.
'We should be allowed to do this.'
Danger: A military spokesman said they were checking the area for mines and radiation leaks
Investigating: He said they would dig to a depth of a metre and then report back to local authorities
Pinpointed: Nazi gold train is said to be hidden along 4km stretch of rail track between Wroclaw and Walbrzch in Poland. It was apparently concealed by SS forces as the Soviet Red Army advanced in 1945
Since August the reports about the gold train have lured prospectors from far and wide in Europe to the small town 300 miles from Berlin in an area of Poland that was German before and during the Second World War.
The men said they used ground-penetrating radar to find the train allegedly buried by retreating German forces in the dying days of the war. The myth of vast treasure being aboard has circulated in the towns and villages of the region ever since.
Last week the two treasure hunters were told they could face prosecution in Poland because they did not have the necessary permits to go looking for it.
The legal action has been brought to deter fresh waves of Klondike hunters swarming to the area.
Authorities fear that someone could be killed if they wander too close to the modern-day railway line which links Walbzrych to the city of Wroclaw.
Barbara Nowak-Obelinda, the head of the regional conservation authority for Walbzrych, who filed the complaint, said: ‘We want no new waves of treasure seekers who ignore the rules.'
The two finders of the alleged train last week presented new radar images which experts remained sceptical of.
'Finders': But treasure hunter Piotr Koper (left) (with fellow 'finder' Andreas Richter, right), says the exercise is pointless as the train (which they claim can be seen in this image) is more than two metres below the surface
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'Finders': But treasure hunter Piotr Koper (left) (with fellow 'finder' Andreas Richter, right), says the exercise is pointless as the train (which they claim can be seen in this image) is more than two metres below the surface
Discovery: Legend has it that the Nazis hid the mystery train packed with gold, cash and loot in their underground network of tunnels to help SS war criminals to fund new lives abroad at the end of WWII
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Discovery: Legend has it that the Nazis hid the mystery train packed with gold, cash and loot in their underground network of tunnels to help SS war criminals to fund new lives abroad at the end of WWII
Missing treasure: Since the end of WWII, hunters have risked their lives to uncover the £20billion-worth of Nazi treasure left behind. The Amber Room of the Czars (pictured) is the most sought-after of them all
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Missing treasure: Since the end of WWII, hunters have risked their lives to uncover the £20billion-worth of Nazi treasure left behind. The Amber Room of the Czars (pictured) is the most sought-after of them all
Koper and Richter also hinted that the fabled Amber Room of the Czars might be aboard the train. The room composed of panels of amber was looted by Nazi troops in 1941 from a palace outside Leningrad and has never been seen since.
It would be worth around £200million today.
But the train - if it indeed exists - might only be laden with war materiel destined for any one of a number of arms industries built in a honeycomb of tunnels in the area designed to withstand Allied air attacks.
The site where the train is supposed to be hidden lies on a railway track between Wroclaw and Walbrzych.
In January 1945, the Red Army began its rampage across Eastern Europe heading for Berlin.
As Germans fled the advancing Soviet forces, looted valuables were shifted from across Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe.
The loot was destined for a number of purposes: getaway money for high-ranking war criminals, the basis for a German resistance movement called 'Werewolf' intended to fight the occupiers, and to become the pension funds for generals whose vast estates bequeathed to them by a grateful Fuhrer in the east which fell into the hands of new, unforgiving owners.
There could also be more than just the one 100-metre long train hidden in the complex network of tunnels built under the Nazi's local headquarters at the castle of Ksiaz and deep into the surrounding hills.
On Thursday, a Polish official confirmed new ground-penetrating radar photographs detail the existence of a massive 500 acre tunnel system near to the spot where the fabled train may lie.
'The studies confirm the existence of a large tunnel complex', said Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, of the municipality Walim to a radio station in nearby Wroclaw.
Credence to the tales: On Thursday, a Polish official confirmed new ground-penetrating radar photographs detail the existence of a massive 500 acre tunnel system near to the spot where the fabled train may lie
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Credence to the tales: On Thursday, a Polish official confirmed new ground-penetrating radar photographs detail the existence of a massive 500 acre tunnel system near to the spot where the fabled train may lie
Trail: Treasure seekers are hoping the gold train is at the end of this railway track to put an end to the mystery
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Trail: Treasure seekers are hoping the gold train is at the end of this railway track to put an end to the mystery
He said the municipality had examined the site. The claims of the two men have been ridiculed in recent weeks by experts who said they could have easily manipulated the alleged computer images of the buried freight train.
But the confirmation by Kwiatkowski that the tunnel system itself exists is certain to reignite gold fever in the region.
Believers in the tall tale of a train loaded with gold worth in the billions are giving more weight to it having having originated in Breslau - now the Polish city of Wroclaw - back in 1945.
The world will never know just how much treasure the Nazis plundered - but it was an awful lot. And a lot of it was stuffed on to trains headed for the Fatherland as the Reich began to crumble.
Just two thirds of the gold stolen by the Nazis from European central banks during the war has ever been found.
The favourite theory emerging now among the townspeople of Walbryzch is that the treasure departed from Breslau, 50 miles away, in May 1945 on its way back to Berlin.
Chief cashier of the dreaded SS, Bruno Melmer, was in charge of dozens of shipments aboard trains trundling back to the heart of the Reich. This included the grisly shipments of gold teeth ripped from death camp victims after they were gassed.
Missing from Poland, however, remains hundreds of tons of gold from various Jewish ghettoes which never made it back to Berlin.
Nazis enriched themselves massively in the war and, if the theories are correct, were probably moving the train back to Germany as the tide of the conflict turned against them - to finance getaways, new identities and as the bedrock for their pensions when the shooting stopped.
'Found': If it is the missing Nazi gold train which has been found, historians say that when Polish forces begin digging they will find an armoured locomotive similar to the one pictured used by the Nazis during WWII
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'Found': If it is the missing Nazi gold train which has been found, historians say that when Polish forces begin digging they will find an armoured locomotive similar to the one pictured used by the Nazis during WWII
Discovery: The alleged uncovering of the Nazi gold train has sparked feverish global excitement with the eyes of the world focused on the town of Walbrzych in Poland (pictured)
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Discovery: The alleged uncovering of the Nazi gold train has sparked feverish global excitement with the eyes of the world focused on the town of Walbrzych in Poland (pictured)
Die Welt newspaper in Germany gave credence to the Breslau claim in a report in which it stated; 'Here the former Goebbels confidante Karl Hanke as Gauleiter since 1941. He was so greedy he was known among other Nazi officials as a 'golden pheasant.''
With Hanke plugged directly into the dark heart of Nazism via the office of propaganda chieftan Goebbels, it would be easy to commandeer much-needed rolling stock to form a 'special train' with an exceedingly special cargo in those days of confusion, terror and death.
The tunnel complex which Kwiatkowski says the local council has found was called 'Riese' - Giant - by the Nazis who constructed it using slave labourers from concentration camps to house arms industries to keep them safe from air raids. Stretching from the Gothic castle of Ksiaz they built the labyrinth deep into the surrounding mountains.
Nazi treasure has always caught the imagination of people. The prospect of finding the Amber Room of the Czars, or the lost Rembrandts pilfered by regime magpie Hermann Goering, fuels a weekend treasure hunting obsession deep in the soul of many Germans.
The news of the heavily armoured freight train parked in the yet-to-be-disclosed tunnel has sent people from across Germany and Poland to the area with metal detectors. Police are now issuing 100 pound fines to trespassers.
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