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The Weissensee Gold Editor's note:
A history of one of the largest and proven buried treasures in the world: what has been discovered and what is still waiting to be found. In late April 1945, a convoy of German trucks left the German-occupied Italian city of Muggia [in Istria] on the Adriatic Sea and drove north through Udine and then northeast to Villach in what was once the Greater German Reich and is now Austria. There were five trucks, all painted the medium camouflage yellow of the later war German Wehrmacht, and one staff car bearing license plates of the SS. This car was occupied by SS-Gruppenführer Odlio Globocnik, Senior SS and Police Commander of the Adriatic Region, his driver and two SS aides. The trucks each had, besides the driver, two armed Ukrainian guards, all in field-gray Waffen-SS uniforms. Inside the trucks were stacked dozens of heavy wooden German ammunition boxes, containers of food, cases of liquor and miscellaneous furniture, carpets and household goods. Before the convoy reached Villach, it turned off the main highway and headed west through the Gaitaler Alps, finally stopping on the north shore of the Weissensee, a long, deep mountain lake. The ground was still hard from the winter cold, but throughout the night and into the early hours of the next day, holes were dug in the ground at various points around the lake and the wooden ammunition boxes carefully buried. The fresh earth was hastily covered with armfuls of old pine needles and branches. All of the sites were carefully marked on a map and then the trucks drove off, past the small towns of Neusach and Techendorf and onto the main road which is now E-66. Globocnik was later captured by a British armored unit and purported by them to have killed himself while under interrogation. In fact, U.S. intelligence reports indicate very clearly that not only did Globocnik survive the end of the war, but ended up in American employment. He had bought his freedom by bribing the British and turning over to them the contents of two of his buried cases, which consisted of many thousands of British pound notes. The remainder of the wooden chests contained millions of dollars worth of gold coins, religious medals, gold jewelry, platinum, silver, antique coins, gold pencils, containers of dental gold and bridgework, and wedding rings. These had originated in the concentration camps under Globocnik’s control in the Lublin district of what had been pre-war Poland. While the head of such camps as Belzec and Treblinka, Globocnik who had been fired by Hitler from his official prewar position as Gauleiter, or Governor, of Vienna for theft, took advantage of his situation. He sequestered a large amount of treasure he took from the occupants of his camps as well as additional assets obtained from extensive treasure hunts in the districts he controlled. When Heinrich Himmler learned of Globocnik’s completely unauthorized activities in his Polish domain, he ordered him to close the camps, destroy any trace of them and remove himself with a promotion, to the city of Trieste where Globocnik, a Slovenian, had been born in 1904. While there, Globocnik managed to acquire more loot and it was this money which he took into the Austrian Alps with a crew of his loyal Ukranians who had served as camp guards at Treblinka. Himmler, and the head of the SS economic section, Oswald Pohl, were well aware that the Slovenian SS general had made off with money belonging to the SS, and the U.S. National Archives has an extensive file of correspondence between the trio, a file that also contains lists of stolen valuables. Globocnik, who ended up in Syria as a corresponding member of the CIA-controlled Gehlen Organization, was never able to recover any of his hidden treasure, but his disclosures to his captors, and later employers, led to an extensive treasure hunt after the war. |
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Globocnik supplied a map overlay which he claimed showed the exact locations of each burial spot along with a brief notation of the contents. The problem, as noted in U.S. reports, was that the overlay did not correspond to the standard German Wehrmacht 1:50 000 scale maps of the Alpen- und Donau-Reichsgaue of 1944. Other military maps were checked with equally negative results and the official opinion expressed both in the United States and England was that Globocnik had sold his captors a bill of goods. In the following years, the thought of the buried treasure had energized a number of people from various countries and the Weissensee became a very popular vacation spot. In the winter, when the ground was frozen, the visitors were tourists partaking of winter sports. But in the summer, the guest registries in the various inns and pensions indicate a remarkable number of visitors from Germany, England and Israel, all of whom were no doubt seeking rest and relaxation in the deep pine woods or out on the placid lake. Globocnik, however, had not sold his captors a bill of goods. The transparent overlay was completely accurate and it was the lack of persistence of both the British and Americans that led them to discount the validity of the treasure map. Obtaining the overlay was one matter, after all no one believed it officially, but trying to find out what kind of a map Globocnik might have used was quite another. Eventually one was found in a shop in Klangenfurt which was of a pre-1938 printing and dealt specifically with the Weissensee area. It had originally been produced for hikers and was never used by the military. When the overlay was placed over this map, the markings on the edges matched perfectly with the map, even down to penciled in lines showing the roads and trails that existed in the years before the war. On this overlay, which was folded and repaired with transparent tape, were nine crosses marked in indelible pencil and after each mark was the notation “10 Kisten” or “8 Kisten,” and brief notations about the depth of the burial sites such as “1.5 m.” The translation of Kisten is box or crate and the metric depths are obvious. When the information about the positive location of Globocnik’s horde was confirmed in 1989, individuals in possession of the overlay and the map embarked on an expedition to recover as much as possible, if not all, of the buried treasure. Under then-current Austrian law, the treasure trove was to be divided equally between the finder or finders, the government of Austria and the owner or owners of the land on which it was found. Very discreet inquiry with agencies in Vienna disclosed that the Austrian government did not view their former Gauleiter’s money as having been acquired through criminal activities and that, therefore, the division of the find was to follow standard procedure. Had the government decreed that the buried money resulted from a criminal endeavor, the state would assume complete control over it and its eventual disposal. Given this written assurance, four individuals embarked on a treasure hunt which, if successful, would rival any other such hunt, even the discovery of the Spanish treasure galleons in the waters of Florida. Two of these entrepreneurs were American. One was a CIA employee who worked in Berlin…for both the Company and the East German Stasi. and the other was along because of his possession of the map and overlay. The other two seekers were a German, once an officer in the SS and a former aide to Globocnik, and a Ukrainian SS man who had been involved with the original plantings, but had no specific memory of what he helped bury, and more important, where. There were nine sites involved. One site had been discovered and looted by Globocnik’s British military captors in 1945, another had been paved over as a parking lot for a postwar inn and was completely inaccessible. Jackhammering up sections of asphalted parking lots was apt to draw the ire of the building’s operators as well as the completely unwelcome attentions of the Austrian gendarmes. The remaining seven deposits were the goals of the recent arrivals at the towns of Techendorf and Neusach. It was decided to break the group into two sections for security reasons, the two Americans renting quarters at Neusach and the other two remaining at Techendorf. The German had rented a camper wagon and was pretending to be deeply interested in healthful tours of the woods while his Ukrainian companion developed an equal interest in rowing about the lake in a rented boat, looking for ideal fishing spots. One of the Americans, who had some artistic abilities, posed as a landscape artist and spent some of his time conspicuously working in watercolors in areas easily observed by the curious. His fellow countryman devoted a good deal of his time in courting various young women, who as often happens, came to the summer resort looking for remote and discreet romance far from permanent boyfriends, husbands or prying relatives. Both were reasonably successful and after two weeks of convincing the local residents that they were indeed both artistic and lecherous, the group came together one night to consolidate their strategy.
The first dig was begun on Sunday, June 10, 1990 at 11:30 p.m. The area selected was just past the town of Neusach where the main road ended. It was about a kilometer past the end of the official road and could easily be reached on foot. Armed with the map, the overlay, shovels, two tarpaulins and a very expensive metal detector, they spent almost two hours in attempting to finesse Globocnik’s notes. The land had remained the same since 1945, but the growth of new trees since then created a number of problems. The cache, consisting of four boxes, was located by the detector eventually, surprisingly close to the original location noted on the map and the digging began. The tarps were placed on either side of the opening and dirt from the dig was carefully dumped on top of them to facilitate filling in the excavation when they were finished. The ground was well-thawed and after thirty minutes of shared digging, a spade resounded from the lid of one of the chests. Very much like 19th century grave robbers, the quartet worked in furtive haste, all of them positive that someone would discover their activities. No one came, however, and the first box was opened in situ. Much of the wood had rotted and the metal fittings were almost shapeless with rust, but the contents of the crate had been carefully packed in tin boxes which had been dipped in wax and were completely intact. The small boxes, which were pleasantly heavy, were lifted out and carefully stacked at one end of the rectangular hole and the excavation process was continued until all four cases had been located, broken into and emptied. Without making any attempt, pleasurable though it would have been for all concerned, to open the metal containers, the hole was quickly filled in again. The loose earth was tamped down by stamping on it and finally, a collection of small rocks, twigs, pine needles and forest detritus spread over the surface. The use of the tarps had kept telltale fresh earth from giving the site away and shortly before the sun came up, the German returned along a hiking path with his rented camper to load up the fruits of their nocturnal labors. The Americans had rented a small vacation home at the edge of Neusach and by the time dawn had touched the tops of the trees and the mountains above the north side of the lake, the small boxes were being opened one by one. Each box had its own inventory and the contents were checked against this. The first expedition had garnered a considerable quantity of jewelry including many gold wedding rings, brooches, cameos, glass frames and gold coins.
These were put into tubes which consisted of black PVC plumbing pipe, about six inches in diameter and one meter long, threaded at both ends, and closed with PVC caps. Each tube was marked with a letter and number and the same markings were inked in at the top of the original typed inventory. The tin boxes were flattened, put into a fishing bag and later discreetly dumped into the lake by the Ukrainian. Everyone was tired after the evening’s exertions and with the exception of the Ukrainian’s foray onto the lake, the balance of the day was devoted to rest. The next dig began on the evening of Monday, June 11, 1990 at the eastern end of the lake. There was a camping ground there and a road that led to Highway E-55, some 9 kilometers away. The site was about two kilometers from the camping ground and it was necessary to be especially vigilant to avoid attracting any unwanted attention from late hikers, inquisitive children or romantic couples seeking a nesting place in the trees. The second site was discovered to have a pine tree growing over it, and a good deal of time was consumed in procuring a saw, removing the tree, dragging its carcass into the woods and hacking through the extensive root system. There were eight boxes in this horde and the root system had broken into several of them, but as before the contents were well protected in waxed tin boxes and removed without incident. The camper van became stuck in a deep rut on the way back and it took nearly an hour to extricate it. But stuck vehicles and muddy, unshaven individuals were not out of place and aside from an athletic young male camper who spent some time in assisting the treasure hunters in getting their loot-packed van back onto the track, there were no incidents. The sun was well up when the second load was unpacked, checked and put into the PVC tubes. This load consisted almost entirely of rings, jewelry and scrap gold. There were a number of coins and the artistic American was delighted to note that a number of them were very valuable ancient Greek silver and gold coins, the true value of which seemed to be lost on everyone, but himself. The Ukrainian made another trip with a far larger load of flattened containers, and because of a number of legitimate fishermen on the lake that morning, had to expend considerable effort in rowing around to unoccupied areas to discard the evidence. The various members were experiencing considerable physical problems with sore muscles and it was generally agreed that they resume their regular social activities for several days to thwart any possible curious tourists. Two French-speaking individuals had been seen moving along the water’s edge between the towns carrying a metal detector. One of the Americans pointed them out to the Austrian proprietor of a restaurant who remarked in a sarcastic tone that they were looking for some treasure a “big Nazi” was supposed to have buried there at the end of the war. When pressed for information, he continued that there was no treasure, but it was considered good business to discuss the probability of it with foreign tourists. There was even one enterprising local gentleman who rented out metal detectors. The next expedition set out on the night of Friday, June 15. It was decided to avoid the section of the eastern end of the lake and its campers and pot holes so they began early, circling around the end of the lake and commencing to dig about 1 a.m. on the morning of the 16th. There were no tree roots to deal with and they were far enough from the main roads and unwanted visitors to make their labors much easier. The soil was looser, containing a quantity of sand, and the six boxes were in far better shape than the others they had encountered previously. This dig went entirely without incident and the contents consisted mainly of gold coins, loose gem stones and a large number of gold bars weighing ten kilos each. These were packed at the bottom of the crates without wrappings, but as gold is relatively impervious to rot or destruction by the elements, they all appeared to be in pristine condition. All these bars had their weight stamped into them and they appeared to have been cast in a mold designed for lead bars. The only other marks on the bars were from an Italian metal foundry which had obviously been put into the molds on manufacture and did not indicate a bank or refinery origin. The fourth exhumation took place on the night of Sunday, June 17th, about 20 meters west of the third site. It proceeded without incident and the contents of the six chests proved to be more gold coins, several large boxes of gold religious medallions, a quantity of old American paper gold certificates, several jewel-studded, gold-sheathed old Russian religious icons, an 18th century silver Jewish Torah case complete with parchment document inside, a silver table service bearing the double-headed Polish eagle, and a brace of cased, silver-mounted flintlock pistols from the palace of Catherine the Great at Tsarskoe Selo outside of what was then Leningrad. How these got into the hands of General Globocnik was never discovered. There were also a number of original musical scores by the Polish composer Chopin in excellent condition, and a miscellany of other items of value. The German was beginning to have problems in his lower lumbar region following the exertions and it was decided to take a short break. During this period, the Americans borrowed the camping van and drove off to the city of Villach where they bought a truck. This was painted to resemble a moving van. As a number of people seeking peace and quiet from the more metropolitan areas of Austria bought property in the Weissensee area, the arrival and departure of moving vans was not considered a noteworthy event. On Thursday, June 21, 1990, the visitation to the fifth site in the cluster of remaining burials was interrupted briefly by a nocturnal party of drunken hikers, who decided to rest within clear view of where the resurrection men were planning to work. What was worse, one of the hikers was possessed of a handgun which he began to discharge on a fairly regular basis at various trees and other objects. This eventually drew the attentions of the local police who drove down the sandy track in a lurching vehicle, frightening off the inebriates, and leaving the field to the treasure hunters who were concealed at some distance in the underbrush. The German was now complaining of back pains again and his Ukrainian companion was terrified that the police would return, so the digging went much slower. This horde consisted of five cases, two of which had throughly rotted, spilling their contents out when the boxes were moved. From this find came more gold coins, several boxes of unset jewels, more wedding rings, a large German Bible from the sixteenth century with silver clasps and an inset coat of arms, another collection of ten kilo gold bars, and a thick file of official German records wrapped in oil skin and sealed in copper tubes. These proved to be the records of Globocnik’s prison camps listing the names, occupations and eventual fates of a large number of inmates. The gold bars put a strain on the tires of the camper which blew a tire on its trip out of the area and the van had to be emptied to get at the spare. Throughout this process, the German complained constantly about the pains he was suffering, and the Ukrainian joined in as a sort of chorus. His lamentations centered around the fact that the police would certainly return and they would then lose everything they had worked so hard to acquire.
On the forenoon of Friday, June 22nd, an impromptu conference was held on the terrace of a convenient inn with all the parties participating. Over the consumption of various local beverages and a lengthy lunch, the European Union branch of the association declared that it was their unanimous wish to leave the area at once, taking with them their portion of the recovered loot. It was pointed out that two more sites remained and that these sites were sufficiently remote as to virtually preclude discovery. The objectors claimed that they now had more than enough precious metal to satisfy them and would have some problems transporting it to the relative safety of Germany. They agreed to abandon their shares in the remaining two troves in exchange for a larger share of the material already recovered. They had no interest in the guns or the religious artifacts, preferring to take just the coins and the jewels which were more easily transported. Finally, after much muted disputation, it was agreed that the precious stones, containing a large number of loose diamonds, some of the gold coins, all of the gold jewelry, and a few of the gold bars would go to the German/Ukrainian part of the team. The balance of the heavy gold bars, the coins and the religious artifacts would remain with the Americans. As one of the Americans later remarked to his fellow national, the value of diamonds was completely artificial and they were always hard to sell for a decent profit. Since the German was fascinated with the cold glitter of the stones, he was given all of them along with large, but flawed natural emeralds, some of the gold coins which would be more difficult to convert to cash, boxes of scrap gold, nineteenth century watches, and a considerable number of wedding rings. Following this, the participants in this Last Supper went their separate ways, leaving the Americans in possession of a very valuable bible, a collection of ancient coins worth, at the very least, the aggregate value of all the unset stones, the more easily disposed of gold coins, and almost all the gold bars. There were now two men left to exhume the remaining two sites, and while the panic of the departed team members had some effect on those remaining behind, it did not deter them from going forth twice more on the evenings of the 29th and 30th of July. The final gathering consisted mainly of gold bars, a small suit of dress 16th century armor designed for a child and set with stones of some value, and a collection of books in Latin which later turned out to have come from the Polish state library at Cracow. With the cleansing of the last site and the scattering of the last armfuls of forest litter, the first part of the saga of the Globocnik gold was over. The second part was about to begin. Finding the treasure, unearthing it and dividing it was child’s play compared with the logistical problems inherent in moving a truck full of contraband gold out of Austria, and to an area where it could be removed from the European continent and enjoyed at leisure elsewhere. On Wednesday, July 4, 1990, the freshly-painted moving van left Weissensee forever, heading the nine kilometers to E-66 and south towards Italy with its inviting port cities on the Adriatic. The truck was properly registered and a portion of it was loaded with cheap, second-hand furniture purchased in Austria to lend some versimillitude to the story that an Austrian family was moving to Venice for business reasons. The former CIA man had obtained all the correct forms and was prepared to encounter Italian customs. However, the customs post was closed and he drove straight through without incident. What happened to the German and his partner is not known, although they both managed to drive into Germany without any incident. It was rumored that the German retired to nurse his bad back in an expensive suburb of Munich while his co-worker married a fellow Slav and opened an ethnic restaurant in Switzerland. The Americans bought a servicable ship in a marina at the northern end of the Adriatic, loaded up their cargo and engaged several local fisherman who had a desire to emigrate as far and as quickly from Italy as possible. The boat, which was a large diesel custom-built fishing boat, was entirely capable of transversing the Mediterranean as well as the central reaches of the Atlantic without undue effort. The first part of the trip was very scenic, the artistic American spending most of his time making sketches of such points of interest as the ancient palace of Diocletian at Split, and taking a brief detour to make drawings of the palace of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria on the Greek island of Corfu. They sailed through the wine-dark seas of Greece and out, eventually, past the Pillars of Hercules and vanished completely from this narrative. In September of 1998, another expedition, this time under the direction of one Norman Scott of Alachua, Florida-based “Global Explorations,” arrived at the Hotel Cieslar in Techendorf. There were twelve persons in the party, most of whom arrived on the eighth of September with the remaining members arriving on the ninth. This expedition consisted of:
Mr. Scott and his secretary, Ms Doré, Room
117 This expedition made a number of searches of the area between 8th September and 14th September, 1998. Electric boats were rented at Neusach and the eastern end of the Weissensee, where the maps indicated the gold had been buried and partially recovered. Only sail and electric-powered boats were allowed on the lake to avoid pollution. The official police patrol speedboat was gasoline-fueled. During this timeframe, numerous indications of buried gold were found but because the lake is a very popular tourist resort, there were far too many hikers, sunbathers, fishermen and campers to permit any kind of digging.
However, at the site called the “Lakawand,” Scott and some of his party climbed the stone bluff and discovered at least eight sites that had been previously excavated. The ground had sunk down and left behind a series of hollow impressions in the tree-covered earth overlooking the lake. The expensive metal detectors located some metal but as it was far too late in the day to begin digging and since no one had the foresight to bring shovels, it was decided to return the next day for serious excavation. The next day could only be described as controlled chaos. The diggers woke late, had trouble finding shovels and when they got to the Lakawand site, it began to rain very heavily. The local Gendarmerie had been alerted by the boat renter that a party of foreigners had set forth bearing shovels and since the Austrians are not happy about digging parties looking for gold they themselves could find, the irate and wet treasure hunters were accosted by even more irate Austrian police. They were told that they were trespassing not only on private property but also in a state forest preserve and must depart. They had not the time to uncover anything but one rusty can and three beer bottle caps. There was considerable anger expressed by the frustrated hunters towards Mr. Douglas, the man with the overlays. It was discovered, in a heated and very vocal meeting held in the lounge of the Cieslar Hotel, that the contract Global Explorations had with him specified only that he bring them to within 100 square meters of existing, and previous, sites. As that much square footage approximated a football field, accurate location of buried gold was almost impossible. They were even more irate to discover that Mr. Douglas had recovered a number of important German documents, once the property of General Globocnik, from where he had buried them earlier. They had no intrinsic value but it appeared that Douglas had used the opportunity presented to him by the Global people to have a pleasant and entirely free vacation to the beauties of the Austrian lake country with the opportunity of recovering documents of great political sensitivity. The unfortunate Mr. Scott was the object of scorn and derision on the part of his investors and this expedition ended in violent recriminations, threats of lawsuits, bad checks tendered for lodgings and no gold to show for their extensive investments in time and money. In June of 2000, there was yet another visit to the treasure troves of the Weissensee. This one, far more succesful than the 1998 gathering, consisted of only two people and was extensively photographed. Mr. Douglas was the last of the two Americans involved in the primary exploration. His earlier companion, James Atwood, Lt.Colonel USA and former CIA official in Berlin, had died during a heart operation, his share of the loot no doubt spent on medical bills. The new hunters arrived at the Hotel Cieslar on 11th June, 2000. On 12th June, a visit was made to the owner of the Kärtnerhof Hotel in Techendorf, one Herr Richard Domenig. The previous Global Exploration team had located, by means of the map and confirmed by their electronic equipment, a very large cache of gold which was buried on the hotel’s property. The lowest estimate, based on Globocnik’s records, was that he had buried, in what was an empty field in 1945, over six million dollars in gold bars. Herr Domenig had been spoken with by a Viennese attorney with an eye to permitting this treasure to be excavated. He initially agreed but then decided that he would rather do the work himself rather than share his buried treasure with anyone else. Unfortunately, he had no idea where it was buried and since he refused to share any of the gold, he did not get the coordinates. The boxes of gold are still buried beneath his paved parking lot and while the hotel owner has brought in several specialists, they have to date been unable to locate the loot. The next item of business was to check the grounds of the Hotel Cieslar. Just to the north of this elegant ‘Silence Hotel’ is the Hotel Enzian, also owned by the Cieslar family. It was at this hotel that Globocnik and his staff made their headquarters in April of 1945 and it is right near the Enzian building that an additional three million in gold and, according to the papers, a fortune in diamonds, was buried. Frau Cieslar, manager of the hotel bearing her husband’s name and a prominent figure in the small vacation town of Techendorf, also was having none of strangers digging up her lot. Percentages were of no interest to her but the map coordinates were. Those she never obtained, in spite of several hamhanded searches of the Douglas luggage while their owner was absent on other business. His incoming mail was opened and all telephone calls monitored in the office but to no avail.
On the 12th, following the expressions of negativity expressed by the hotel owners, the searchers equipped themselves with two small camping folding shovels, rented another electric boat at Neusach and returned to the partially-mined site at Lakawand. Electronic detection devices were not needed in this instance. The electric boat was dragged up onto the small shingle beach and festooned with severed pine tree branches while more important business was transacted on the steeply sloping forest grounds above. Here, it has been reported, between the 12th and the 14th of June, 2000, two of seven existing sites were excavated. On the 12th, one decaying wooden case was carefully pulled out of the damp ground. The weather was clear and warm and the case, marked ‘SS Eigentum” (or SS property) was sufficiently intact to permit it to be lowered by nylon rope to the beach below. It was subsequently put in the back of the small electric boat and hidden at the mouth of a rock-filled seasonal stream on the south side of the lake. This was well outside the sight of anyone and the case was then opened. It was filled with gold coins, covered with branches and left for the time being. The only road to the area was a very narrow path that a small car could just manage to navagate. On the 13th of June, two more cases were excavated. One was reasonably intact but the other had rotten through and its contents of coins had be be put into a large hiking haversack that had been brought along just for that purpose. The contents of this case, which consisted of gold coins and various items of German militaria including identity disks, papers, medals, an antique flintlock pistol and several knives, were photographed. It rained heavily around noontime and the trip up the lake with the contents of the day’s dig was a damp one. On the 14th of June, and the last day of the digging, two more cases were recovered and taken to join their comrades but not before it became very evident that the Austrian Gendarmes had taken an interest in the subject of treasure hunting on the Weissensee. At 2100, one of the excavators noted, and subsequently photographed, a police boat patrolling back and forth in the eastern reaches of the lake and at 2120, a well-marked police helicopter flew back over the landscape on both sides of the lake. They apparently saw nothing and flew off towards the north. The patrolling boat was moving slowly along the lakeshore, about thirty meters off the land, and it was possible to see some of the crew scanning the shore with binoculars. Finding no trace of a boat or any activity, the patrol boat eventually moved north out of sight and when it disappeared around a point of land, the remaining two chests were hastily lowered to the stony beach and loaded into the concealed boat. The trip up the west shore was stressful but uneventful and it was only when the hunters returned to the site that the cruising police boat resumed its beat. It was then decided to fill in the holes as best as possible (after photographing them first) and depart from the scenic but by now somewhat dangerous area. Mud was washed off in the lake and the two folding shovels were thrown out as far into the cold, deep lake as possible.
There were two splashes followed by a third as the boat was shoved into the water from its hiding place behind a windfall and the electric engine started. When they were out in the middle of the lake, heading back to Neusach, the police boat came up quickly, overtook them and slowed down until it was only a few meters off the starboard side. Several unformed police officials came over to the side and stared down into the boat. What they observed were two obvious tourists, one camera bag, two cameras, a sack of potato chips and three bottles of warm beer. There were brief comments, some waving and off the boat went to hunt for trespassers with boats filled with Nazi loot. Sitting on the end of the boat dock at Neusach was a pleasant youngish Austrian gentlemen in his shirtsleeves. He was very pale and obviously getting a marvellous sunburn while watching the fishermen sitting off the shore, the birds skimming the water and anything else of interest. The Austrians are always noted for their politeness and when the boat bearing the excavators came up, he got to his feet and very kindly offered to give the occupants a hand up. He looked curiously into the boat, noted the cameras, the beer and the potato chips and smiled. The newly-minted tourists explained with much glee how they were photographing the beautiful lake for an American travel magazine. Rather than make a hasty and suspicious departure, both the diggers spent some time boring the poor man half to death with comments about shutter speeds, fishing and the excellent food to be had at the restaurant at the far eastern end of the lake. Finally, it was the observer who beat a hasty retreat. And no doubt returned to the local Polizeirevier to put something on his inflamed, balding head.
The next day, it was mutually decided to leave the visual pleasures of the Weissensee and after informing the very curious hotel staff that Vienna was their goal, the successful treasure hunters departed. Instead of taking the fork that led to the highway and Vienna, they took another one, crossed the Techendorf bridge and drove down the south side of the lake until the came to the remote area where they had hidden the discovered gold. Gold is very heavy and the car’s suspension system made the rest of their journey a matter of some concern. An inventory of the recovery was as follows:
Russian Imperial gold coins
Austrian gold coins
Polish gold
coins
French gold coins
Swiss gold coins
British gold coins The total number of coins was 20,247 and the approximate value as of the date of discovery was $2,998,707. The spot price of gold has increased since that time but all it all, this represented an excellent return on an investment. There are still nearly ten million dollars in Nazi concentration loot buried along the north shore of the Weissensee, there for the taking… if the vigilance of two hotel owners ever slackens. Although it never arose at the time, the moral issue of the actual ownership of the loot is an interesting one. Aside from those who dug it up, who could be considered the rightful owners? The heirs of the late General Globocnik? Various bureaus of the Austrian government? Landowners around the Weissensee? A number of Jews had died in the camps during their existence. Could their heirs or even their co-religionists lay a valid claim to the gold? Since there were a large number of Catholic religious medals in the treasure, might not the population of Poland enter a claim? Or the Vatican? And surely the Russians would wish to recover the Catherine pistols which had been looted by the Wehrmacht during their Eastern Campaign. And who could lay claim to the cases of gold and platinum wedding rings or, most interestingly, an ancient Jewish torah scroll housed in a beautifully chased early 18th century silver case? In attempting to sort out the validity of any of these claims, it might be better advised to consider the old couplet:
Let him take who is able Reprinted from:
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This page compliments of Marisa Ciceran Created: Monday,
April 5, 2004; Updated
Saturday, May 26, 2007
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Two
different stories have emerged of Globocnik's capture and subsequent death.
