Ww2 Treasure Map Released to Public

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2023/01/ww2-treasure-map-released-to-public/145747 ^

[SunkenCiv]

A Ww2 Treasure Map Has Been Released by the National Archives, Part of the Annual Open Access Day in the Netherlands for 2023.

The Open Access Day is an unveiling of former classified or confidential documents.

This year, 1300 pages of archived documents have been made public, including minutes from meetings by senior ministers, WW2 files from the Intelligence Bureau of the Ministry of War, personnel files of spies and the resistance movement, and documents investigating abuses in the internment camps where collaborators were imprisoned after the war to await trial.

Among the released documents is a map from the archives of the Netherlands Management Institute, which is said to indicate the location of a treasure stash looted from the Arnhem bank vault by German soldiers in 1944.

According to contemporary accounts by a German parachutist who served in Velp near Arnhem, the treasure contains jewellery, watches, and gems, buried in four zinc ammunition boxes in a field near Ommeren, Lienden and Meertenwei.

The map is a crude drawing of the region, marking a route in red from the village of Elst on the northern banks of the Nederrijn (the Rhine), heading south to the village of Ingen.

The route then heads further south to the village of Ommeren and a road junction, adjacent to what could be interpreted as two fields where an "X" marks the spot.

Since the map was made public on Tuesday 3rd January, Ommeren has been enveloped by metal detectorists in search of the treasure, where Dutch laws states that a treasure belongs to the finder and the landowner in equal shares.

[21twelve]

Years ago I got a call from a guy that wanted to use my services to find buried treasure in an old tunnel. I think that it was legit but never did it. The property was now a national park/historic site in France, and the owner of the treasure map was in talks with his lawyers last I heard (30 years ago).

He had inherited an old shotgun from his dad. His dad got it from his uncle or father who had escaped France(?) during/before WWII. The relative was some rich Baron or whatever and had a castle. But had to escape with the clothes on their backs and some packs and the shotgun for protection/hunting.

For whatever reason the relative was not able to get his castle back (that’s the part that seems shaky in the story, but I think the guy gave me a good explanation at the time for that).

Anyway, the guy was going to repair the shotgun and found an treasure map inside the hole in the stock that you access to unscrew the wood stock from the metal breach. The map described an escape tunnel from the castle, and the location of three large crates filled with gold, guns and other valuables that they had taken from the castle but could not flee with.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I would bet that before they released the map to the public, they would have had people searching all over the area to find any treasure and recover it.