Treasure Hunters Dig for Nazi Riches
Date: Saturday, March 01st, 2008 (CST )
Topic: World Events & Current affairs
 German treasure hunters dug deeper Wednesday into a hillside near the Czech border in search of what they claim to be a man-made cavern laden with Nazi loot. While a second day of drilling for the suspected cavern brought no immediate results, Mayor Hans-Peter Haustein said he continued to be "100 percent (certain) that treasures from the Nazi time are buried here."
"We just don't know exactly where they are," he said. Haustein has been working with Christian Hanisch, who found a notebook among the belongings of his father, a former Luftwaffe radio operator who died last year. Hanisch came to Haustein after discovering that the book indicated treasure might be buried near the area.
Haustein suggested Wednesday that a cavern the treasure hunters are looking for might hold objects brought from the hunting lodge of Hermann Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe, the Nazi regime's air force. Hanisch said he believed his father helped move "small but heavy boxes" from Schorfheide, north of Berlin, where Goering's lodge was located, to an airstrip near Deutschneudorf, the area where the search is being conducted.
Haustein
says that the coordinates from the notebook are corroborated by
eyewitnesses who reported seeing forced laborers building a bunker-like
depot near the hillside.
He claims that a
sophisticated scan for precious metals indicated that the hillside
contained a large quantity of gold or silver.
Haustein said last week
that he was convinced the hunters had found the storied Amber Room
treasure but later acknowledged that, while there could be "cultural
treasures" in the cavern, such as paintings or amber paneling, they are
not things that show up with a metal detector. Experts have been
skeptical of Haustein's claim.
The Amber Room — named for
magnificent wall panels of golden-brown amber — was stolen by the Nazis
from a palace outside St. Petersburg during World War II and has never
been recovered in its entirety.
Copyright: AOL News
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