The Nazi Gold Train
During the final months of the Second World War, goes the legend, German officials loaded stolen Polish and Russian art, currency, and bullion and loaded it on a train bound for Silesia. There the train was concealed in an underground complex built by forced labor provided by prisoners of war. According to some “witnesses”, the train also contained operational prototypes of weapons intended for use on the Eastern Front.
The train was concealed by the retreating Germans and after the war remained under Soviet control. During the years since efforts by Polish scientists and historians to locate the train and its contents have been in vain. The train is alleged to have been concealed in the Owl Mountains near the Polish city of Walbrzych (which was then a German city). According to the story, over 300 tons of gold and weapons were concealed from the advancing Russians on the train.
The Polish government has sponsored searches for the train by agreeing to a finder’s fee to be paid to any expedition which succeeds in locating it. The Poles have also conducted searches using the Polish Army to no avail. In 2016, a search spearheaded by a German mining company claimed to have identified a train of sufficient length concealed underground in the vicinity where the gold train was supposed to have been hidden. After this information was leaked to the press – according to the miners the leak was through the Polish government – the government formally denied the existence of the train.
Later that summer excavation and exploration teams from both Polish and German organizations, government sponsored and private, explored the area in detail. Neither developed any proof of the existence of a buried train, and the Polish team determined the area in question to be a naturally occurring buried ice formation. After exhaustive research, including some excavation, no evidence of the train was unearthed.
Despite anecdotal evidence from eyewitnesses, who witnessed the train being loaded and later concealed in Silesia, no physical evidence of the train’s existence nor its treasure has ever been found. Nor has any documentation describing the train or its contents, unusual given the meticulous record keeping proclivities of the Germans.