Arrrr...we be looking for Nazi booty.

[Qray]

Hunt continues for Nazi treasure

Tue Feb 26, 2008

DEUTSCHKATHARINENBERG, Germany (AP) - German treasure hunters were to begin digging Tuesday for what they claim to be plunder buried by the Nazis in a man-made cavern near the Czech border.

The area's mayor, Hans-Peter Haustein, and a man who found the coordinates for the buried booty in a notebook among his deceased father's belongings, maintain that a scan of the spot has revealed that a large quantity of metal is about 20 yards below the surface. They believe it to be either gold or silver, based on the scan with a sophisticated metal detector.

On Tuesday, a drilling company was to start work on the site, about 100 yards from the Czech Republic in the eastern German state of Saxony, boring a hole so that a camera can be snaked down to the find to determine exactly what it is.

Haustein — an amateur treasure hunter who is also a member of Germany's parliament for the opposition Free Democratic Party — said the process could take several days, depending on how much rock needs to be penetrated.

"We have no time pressure," he said. "Our top priority is safety — we can't allow anything to happen."

Haustein has been working with Christian Hanisch to find the suspected treasure for about eight weeks, after Hanisch found the notebook in the belongings of his father, a former Luftwaffe radio operator who died last year.

Haustein said last week that he was convinced they 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.

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.

Experts have been skeptical of Haustein's claim, pointing out that stories of the Amber Room surface regularly, only to be proved wrong, and that the Amber Room had no significant amounts of gold or silver in it.

[Llew]

Sounds fun.

[fanuilh]

The amount of stuff the Nazis just plain stole is mind-boggling. I was on a tour to Russia in 1992, went to the Hermitage museum and several other places, including the palace of Catherine the Great, where the amber room was originally located. They've recreated it, but they want the original panels back. Along with all the other stuff the Nazis took.

I hope, if they find what they think they're going to find, that it gets returned to its rightful owners. Or at least their descendants.

[Ariel]

I'm with you Fan!

[Qray]

Same here. Does anyone know of a list online of artwork and such that still hasn't been recovered from WWII? It'd be interesting to see what's still out there.

Unfortunately, if they do find pieces of the Amber Room, it's suspected that since it's been in storage for so long, it'll be little more than ash if it's moved.

So far, all they've discovered is a plume of water from one of the test drillings they did.

[fanuilh]

Does anyone know of a list online of artwork and such that still hasn't been recovered from WWII? It'd be interesting to see what's still out there.

This might be a good starting point:

http://www.lootedart.com/

Unfortunately, if they do find pieces of the Amber Room, it's suspected that since it's been in storage for so long, it'll be little more than ash if it's moved.

Amber's pretty tough stuff. They've found bits of amber with fossilized bugs millions of years old in some archaeological digs, so just hiding the stuff underground shouldn't hurt it. It is breakable, though, and the panels will be thin enough to be fragile. I hope it's found, whenever and wherever it's found, in good shape. Imagine all those artisans putting their hearts and backs into the work for however many years it took them to create it, only to have it stolen and perhaps destroyed by a bunch of heathens and philistines.

[Qray]

Amber's pretty tough stuff. They've found bits of amber with fossilized bugs millions of years old in some archaeological digs, so just hiding the stuff underground shouldn't hurt it. It is breakable, though, and the panels will be thin enough to be fragile. I hope it's found, whenever and wherever it's found, in good shape. Imagine all those artisans putting their hearts and backs into the work for however many years it took them to create it, only to have it stolen and perhaps destroyed by a bunch of heathens and philistines.

I think it may be the thinness of the amber that could make having stored it all these years dangerous.

This is the week that they're suppose to snake a camera down and see what they've got. So far I haven't even heard that they've found the entrance, much less the bunker itself. Has anyone heard anything?

[aldan]

Nein.

[Qray]

Oh, the drama.

A disagrement between Christian Hanisch and Heinz-Peter Haustein on where to dig has apparently ended the excavations. At least for the time being.

Is it me, or does it sound like there's something going on that we don't know about? We're talking a suspected two tons of gold here. Dig in BOTH places. I'm sensing possible conspiracy and collusion. Where's pim?

Treasure hunter Christian Hanisch told CNN Thursday that the hunt for Nazi Gold and possibly the legendary Amber Room will end Friday after the two men leading the expedition had a disagreement.

Heinz-Peter Haustein, the other treasure hunter, told Germany's Bild newspaper that geophysicists will now re-evaluate the situation and that digging may resume in two weeks. CNN has so far not been able to reach Haustein for confirmation.

"Haustein told me to get out of here immediately," an angry Hanisch told CNN in a telephone interview.

He said Haustein, who is also the mayor of the village Deutschneudorf, where the digging is taking place, told him he wanted to make the expedition more credible by calling in the scientists.

"It can't get any more credible than now," said Hanisch, whose measurements had allegedly pinpointed the treasure.

He said the drilling taking place at the site never focused on the exact coordinates he had provided. "They just always dug around there, but never at the exact location where I wanted them to dig," he said.

The two treasure hunters had said geological surveying had revealed an underground cave holding large amounts of precious metal. They said it could be a holding area dug by the Nazis who used it to stash valuables in World War II.

Haustein said he also believes the legendary Amber Room, an interior made of gold and amber that the Nazis had looted from a palace in St. Petersburg, after Adolf Hitler's forces invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, was also hidden somewhere in the mountains around Deutschneudorf -- and that finding a stash of gold could give clues as to the whereabouts of the Amber Room.

Now Hanisch says he never believed in the Amber Room theory. "I never talked about finding the Amber Room anywhere here, that was all Haustein's idea," he said.

Hanisch said that his father was one of the soldiers who helped transport gold and other valuables to the area around Deutschneudorf near the end of the Second World War and that when he died he left behind coordinates allegedly leading to a cave holding gold and other valuables.

Earlier this week, Haustein said digging at the site was stopped more than a week ago amid safety concerns, as German authorities and the treasure hunters feared that the shaft dug so far might collapse, and that the alleged cave may be rigged with explosives or poisonous booby traps.

Deutschneudorf is in Germany's Ore Mountains, and the mountain where the treasure hunters were looking was a copper mine until the 19th century. Though the mine was shut down in 1882, geologists have found evidence that soldiers from Hitler's Wehrmacht -- the German armed forces -- had been there: machine guns, parts of uniforms and explosives that are on display at the town's museum.

[fanuilh]

Sheez. It's just greed. If not greed over the value of the "booty" it's greed for the credit and fame.

Criminy.

[Qray]

I agree with you, fan. I often wonder in situations like this why they don't do the dig in private without notifying the media. If and when they find something, that's when they should alert the media.

I suppose the publicity and people coming into the town to check out the "dig" is good for the town's economy, but still, these guys could end up looking like Geraldo in front of Al Capone's "vault" if they don't find anything.

Has anyone heard anything new on the dig? The last I heard was that the dig was "temporarily" being shut down for two weeks to allow a team of geophysicists to take measurements in the area. The hope was that the geophysicists could narrow down where man-made Nazi cavern is located.

But that was back on Feb. 29.