Released Map Spurs Search for Nazi Loot

Treasure hunters, here’s your chance to find a part of history and find some buried Nazi loot in the woods near Amsterdam.

This month, the Dutch National Archives in The Hague, as part of its annual “publicity day,” released a map drawn by a German soldier nearly 80 years ago. Officials released it along with thousands of no-longer-classified documents. The map, drawn in spring 1945, shows the location of a buried stash that was stolen by Nazi soldiers.

It has spurred a treasure hunt of epic scale for boxes of gold and jewels in the small Dutch village of Ommeren, population 751.

It all started a couple of weeks before the liberation of the Netherlands from its Nazi occupiers. Five German soldiers buried four ammunition boxes filled with gold, jewels and watches in the woods outside Ommeren. They had found and picked up the goods in the streets of Arnhem when a bank vault exploded in the late summer of 1944. What the soldiers didn’t know was that an injured soldier named Helmut Sonder was lying behind some bushes and saw them bury the boxes. He drew a map that showed exactly where and how deep the boxes were buried. The map ended up in the Dutch National Archives in The Hague.

People from all over the country are now in the village, about an hour’s drive from Amsterdam, waving metal detectors and digging up the woods.

Only time will tell if the boxes of looted goods are still there.

We predict airline tickets to Amsterdam may suddenly become hot commodities …

Photo: Ilvy Njiokiktjien/The New York Times via ArtDaily.cc