There's gold in them hills (maybe): Polish town abuzz with claims legendary Nazi gold has been found
Two men have retained an attorney to negotiate 10 per cent of the value of train's cargo in return for information about its location.
Whether it's a hoax, wishful thinking or a bombshell discovery, the claim of two treasure hunters to have found a legendary Nazi train laden with gold is stirring excitement in Poland.
Residents of the Owl Mountains area southwest of Wroclaw have traded tales for decades about a train with Third Reich markings passing through in early 1945 as the Nazis sought to carry off looted gold and other valuables ahead of the Soviet Red Army's advance.
Historians are playing down the claim, pointing out there has never been any evidence found in the Nazis' usually detailed documentation of operations to give credence to the myth.
But local officials in the town of Walbrzych, near the Czech border, seem to be taking seriously the claim of the two men, a Pole and a German, who have retained a Wroclaw attorney to negotiate their offer of information on the train's location in exchange for 10 per cent of the value of its cargo.
"This is a find of world significance, on a par with discovering the Titanic," attorney Jaroslaw Chmielewski said.
Chmielewski took his unidentified clients' claim to Walbrzych officials last week and has managed to convince them the offer is worth passing on to Polish national authorities. Under Polish law, any valuables found from that era would be state property.
Walbrzych Deputy Mayor Zygmunt Nowaczyk said he was referring the men's claim to the relevant officials in Warsaw.
"We believe that a train has been found. We are taking this information seriously," said another city official, Council Member Marika Tokarskai. "We assume they know what is inside."
Local lore has it that the train was taking the treasure - most of it gold jewellery and fixtures seized from Eastern European Jews and melted into ingots - to German territory further west to prevent it falling into the hands of the Soviet troops who would overrun the area within weeks.
The train was said to have left Wroclaw, then known as Breslau and part of the Third Reich, and travelled through the Project Reise area before it went missing. It is said to have entered a tunnel near Ksiaz Castle and never emerged.
Reise was a vast complex of tunnels and storehouses under the Owl Mountains, constructed by slave labourers. It was never finished, but survivors of the Nazi work camps told tales of massive bunkers and passages, stoking rumours that the gold-laden train pulled into one of the underground recesses for safety from aerial bombing, or to hide the loot from advancing troops.
Public safety officials in the area around Walbrzych have called in reinforcements to guard against treasure hunters thronging the tunnel network, some of which is open to the public as a historical site, but much more sealed off and never explored.
The train, if it exists and is hidden deep in the mountains of Lower Silesia, probably would have been fitted with explosives to deter intruders, Walbrzych Council Chairman Jacek Cichura told the daily .
"We are on alert should we need to take any specific security measures," a police spokeswoman told Poland's TVN24.
Speculation is rife among the excited residents and throngs of foreign explorers and journalists that the mystery train is somewhere near Walim, a village about 20km west of Walbrzych.
Walim was the site of unauthorised drilling and georadar testing in May that left six holes in the ground, Mayor Adam Hausman said after the reported discovery.
