The addresses where the Nazis hid the treasures of the Reich were found in the diary of an SS officer

In Poland, one of the addresses indicated in the Nazi diary as the location of the cache with 28 tons of gold was published, the Live Science writes with reference to the Polish news website The First News (TFN).

Irina Ziganshina

The diary, which was written 75 years ago by an SS officer, hiding under the pseudonym Michaelis, among other things, tells about the intentions of the Reich Minister of the Interior Heinrich Himmler to hide the treasures stolen in Poland, France, Belgium and Russia. The author of the diary lists 11 places where the Nazis arranged caches with gold, jewelry, works of art and objects of worship.

After the war, Michaelis' diary fell into possession of the Masonic lodge and was kept in the German city of Quedlinburg. Elite Nazi officers, including presumably Michaelis, who controlled Nazi transport in southwestern Poland, were members of a secret society that has existed for more than 1000 years during the Third Reich. In 2019, the box handed over the diary to the German-Polish historical foundation Silesian Bridge as an “apology for World War II”.

One of these days it became known one of the places called hiding places in the diary - this is an abandoned well, stretching for 60 meters under the 16th-century Hochberg Palace, which is located in the village of Roztokana in southwestern Poland. It is likely that gold was transported there from the Reichsbank branch in the Polish city of Breslau (Wroclaw), and its value may amount to billions of euros. The location of the cache was calculated thanks to a map that was attached to the diary and accurately indicated the location of the well in the palace, representatives of the Silesian Bridge said. There are also documents saying that after the treasures were hidden, the Nazis killed witnesses, dumped bodies in a well, and then blew up the entrance.

Experts have established that the diary was indeed written during World War II, but its authenticity has not yet been confirmed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland. Nevertheless, the Hochberg Palace, which is curious, was already known during the war as a place where the Nazis hid the wealth seized from the Jews, as well as works of art from museums and galleries. On the territory of Lower Silesia there are many caves, tunnel shafts, as well as castles and palaces with branched dungeons - all this made it possible to arrange hiding places in which even very large objects could be stored.

After the war, the U.S. Art Looting Intelligence Unit (ALIU), the U.S. intelligence agency, went to the director of the Silesian Museum, Gunter Grundmann, as the person involved in Nazi artifact theft. Grundman compiled a list of 80 objects in Lower Silesia - one of them was the Hochberg Palace - where he hid wealth. However, many of these caches, according to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were scrubbed by the Soviet army as it advanced towards Germany.

It is estimated that, in total, the Nazis captured approximately 5 million works of art from European museums and private collections during the war. Many of them have been discovered. Thus, thousands of stolen paintings, rare books, statues and tapestries were found in the complex of salt mines in Altaussee in Austria. A cache of explosives in the mines should have been blown up in the event of a German defeat, but this order was not enforced. However, much has not yet been found. For example, the whereabouts of about 63,000 works of art and artifacts stolen from Polish Jews by the Nazis are still unknown.

As for the alleged gold treasure near Hochberg, the owners of the palace plan to reconstruct and restore the building, which has become unusable, and in the course of the work to search for the buried well.