Buried Nazi treasures in Poland

Most readers here are familiar with the stories of Nazi treasures hidden in Poland during the war - especially the "gold train" legend.  Yesterday I found a "longform" read on the topic; despite being posted at Buzzfeed it seems to be well-written and sensible in its conclusions.

Then, at a press conference in the middle of December, a scientific commission from AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków, which had been dispatched to the site to verify the findings, made a declaration: “There may be a tunnel,” Janusz Madej, the head of a commission announced, “but there is no train.” The world lost interest. Koper and Richter’s sponsors pulled out. They were ridiculed — called impostors and drunks.

The announcement should have put an end to the hunt, but it did the opposite. Koper and his supporters have dug in their heels, standing by their own findings and citing new independent thermo-imaging research as proof. They are preparing to dig, convinced there is something the government is trying to hide...

And indeed, strange things keep happening along the 65th kilometer that no one can explain, while stranger things yet transpire all over Lower Silesia. The gold train is only the tip of the postwar treasure-hunting iceberg — a grander symbol of all that was lost and a beacon for what could still be found...

We boarded the rowboat and Szpakowski pulled us along a line through the man-made caves. He could flush more of the water out, but tourists enjoy the boats. It was dark, lit in parts by hanging bare bulbs. Szpakowski explained he spent over $650,000 of his own money to excavate Włodarz. When he started, the tunnels were full of collapsed rock and submerged from natural drainage. All the entrances were closed off, exploded, crammed with rocks and debris...

Even the local government of Wałbrzych believes in the legends, but even more surprisingly in the conspiracy. Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, the governor of Wałbrzych County, told me he thinks only one-tenth of the Riese complex has been found. “It will be the biggest historical discovery in the world from the period of World War II,” Kwiatkowski said. But then why haven’t they started?

“There are higher powers that are always, each time are stopping us from starting,” he said. “Sometimes it is the other clerks, local offices that are telling us that we can’t start drilling. Sometimes it’s the National Forestry that is telling us we can’t do that. And in the other cases, those are environmental groups. … I don’t know, who exactly is disturbing us. Is it an army? Our army? Or is it a foreign army? But I have this strong feeling that someone is disturbing us.”

Way more at the link.