Back in September, we voiced curious skepticism about breathless reports of a buried train near Wrocław, formerly Breslau, in Poland. Rumors of this “Nazi gold train” supposedly concealed at the end of World War II and filled with either gold, art, or both, had an odd mixture of plausibility and absurdity. Yet Polish officials went on record confirming…something. On August 28, 2015, Deputy Culture Minister Piotr Zuchowski stated at a press conference that he is “99 percent sure” that the government had located the train allegedly loaded with gold, gems, and perhaps artwork that was buried as the Soviet Red Army encircled Breslau in the last months of World War II. “The train is 100 meters long and is protected,” Zuchowski said.
(Status of the current investigation?)
Over the course of the fall, various investigations seemed to get underway but with curious limitations. One was a plan to excavate the area—but only a few feet underground.
Well, it now looks like the optimism was premature. A variety of news sources are reporting that there is nothing there. “There may be a tunnel, but there is no train,” the scientific team’s leader of the expedition to examine the area, Janusz Madej, told the New York Times. According to the Washington Post, the original proponents of the train are undeterred:
Piotr Koper and Andreas Richter, the amateur explorers who claimed to have located the train four months ago, were less convinced by the scientists’ findings. At the same news conference, they said their own research team had found further proof of the train’s existence: images from ground penetrating sensors that showed clear signs of a tunnel laid with tracks and sleepers and several shapes below ground that could only be the fabled vehicle.
One curious aspect of all this is that there still is no record of anyone actually digging into the ground. It would seem to be a relatively inexpensive way to clear the matter up. How costly could drilling a 20 foot hole really be, given the stakes?
Until then, await the next report of a secret treasure find that seems too good to be true.
