Israeli Goes Searching for Nazi Gold at Bottom of German Lake
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East Germany Eckhard Litz Erich Koehler Goering theft Hermann Goering Nazi gold Nazi Theft Stasi Police Stolpsee Yaron Svoray
Goering and Hitler, 1938. Photo: Wikipedia
The search for nearly 18 crates of stolen Nazi gold has begun, but this is no ordinary treasure hunt. Led by Israeli investigative journalst Yaron Svoray, the nearly-$1 billion worth of stolen loot sits at the bottom of Stolpsee, a 988-acre stretch of water to the north of the German capital, Berlin.
Svoray, who has the backing of German authorities, will use sonar and radar equipment to try and locate the gold, which is believed to have been dropped into the lake under the orders of Hermann Goering as the Red Army made its final push for Berlin in March, 1945.
Eckhard Litz, witnessed the disposal of the crates, telling a post-war commission that he saw around 30 concentration camp prisoners unloading them from trucks parked by the Stolpsee. The boxes were then ferried into the middle of the lake, and thrown into its waters.
“When the last case had been thrown overboard, the men returned to shore, were lined up and the last thing I saw were the flashes of the machine guns of the guards as they were killed,” Mr Litz told the commission, according to the UK’s Daily Telegraph.
Svoray has spent much of his life tracking anti-Semites and hunting for Nazi treasure. His attempt to find the Stolpsee treasure is not the first. In the 1980s when the lake lay behind the Iron Curtain, the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, used combat divers to hunt for the gold, and two years ago a group of businessmen also went searching for it.
The search has been reignited by a local priest, Erich Koehler, 79, who has researched the legend of the treasure and who was a pastor near the lake during the East German communist regime.
“They didn’t have the technology in the former East Germany to properly examine the lake,” he told the UK’s Daily Mail.
“But there are enough local people still around to know that the gold is there – and the bodies of the poor souls forced to dump it into the water.”
Mr Svoray said that the vast wealth accumulated by Nazi officials during the war has provided him with another reason to find the gold.
“To me it is not just about the treasure, but also about the people who had it taken from them,” he explained. “My goal is to finally earn them a bit of justice.”
11:04 am
This is not the only vast Nazi treasure stolen from Jews and other Nazi victims.
My father fought in France, Holland, Belgium, and Germany, in WWII. After the surrender my father came across a cave in Germany that was being guarded by U.S. Military. The guards allowed my father to take a look inside the cave. My father said he never saw so much gold and jewelry in his life. He was shocked. The cave was full of gold, jewelry, and oil paintings. I have often wondered what actually happened to this vast treasure stolen from victims of the Satanic Third Reich.
Interestingly, a retired U.S. WWII General died in Georgia around 2000. There was an estate sale. One of my co-workers attended the sale and bought a ring and Nazi flag. I was appalled and told her the ring was covered in blood. She said that there was quite a bit for sale, and the very good stuff (from Nazi Germany) was not for sale to the public. Why was this loot not given to Israel? How do people live with themselves?
8:12 pm
Zwolinski: There were Jews alive in the concentrations camps in 1944. My father was with the first American troops to come in and liberate Dachau. There were still many, many persons alive at that time. In fact, my father mentioned that the ones who were alive, tore the German guards limb from limb who tried to hide among them from the American liberators.
It would be nice if the gold could be found and somehow returned to the families it belonged to. But that would be hard to determine. Instead it should be used for some memorial, or movement to never let something like that happen again.
11:24 am
I do believe the report said the prisoners were returned to shore before being killed. They would be no bones in the lake. What would be wrong with finding the gold? It was taken from the German Jews and it seems only right to me to have it returned to Israel to help them 1. fight against their enemies or 2. to put in a museum for remembrance.
9:06 pm
Israel has all rights to it, just hope no one like Sore-ass ((Geo.) or the like hasn’t got to it first!
Is it not interesting, the same people, enemy, (related to this Holiday) is the same ones (Pershia) that’s at it big time now! Psalm 83 tells us of an event that will cause Israel to regain much of Her land! She (Israel) will return to Her true God! Right now He’s asking; come, lets reason together.
shalom
shalom
5:19 am
Around 30 prisoners identified after they concentration camp external “uniform”. But were they Jews? We know that in 1944 no Jews
were alive in concentration camps. The Jews were directly send to gas chambers.
Therefore they were not provided dirty used by previous murdered men uniforms described by so called ocular witness.We can assume, also the prisoners bodies were not throw in the center of lake.Jews or no Jews the murdered prisoners remains should be recovered with respect.
12:04 am
If “no Jews were alive in concentration camps” then who are the 3 million “holocaust survivors” who have been robbing (“reparations”) the German people for 65 years?
If Litz’s story was like that of soap, lampshades, gas chambers and Ann Frank, then the bottom feeders will find nothing but mud. Who ordered the British to sink the Cap Arcona with 5000 con camp inmates and 77 SS officers being evacuated west in the face of Bolshevik, Poale Zion, Red Army rapist/murders? Who ordered the incineration of Dresden, which was overrun with refugees fleeing the same onslaught, when the war was all but formally over? Furthermore, it is transparently asinine to think all the gold was Jewish, or even very much of it. “The Lie is halfway around the world before the Truth even gets it’s shoes tied.”
8:06 pm
How can you be so ill informed to think so much of the holocaust did not happen. go to the library. read some books. read first hand accounts.
people like you REALLY scare me.
3:22 am
Are their names known? At least a memorial plaque can be
created for starters. A factor to consider in finding them is they are likely under silt, and the neutral buoyancy that can occur would cause them to have drifted randomly from where they originally came to rest.
In very unexpected places now there is a repeat of political seeking of total power, and again nameless people will be disposed of in like manner, including and likely first, those who support the power grab thinking they will share in it and thus be spared, the ultimate tyranny. And a majority are falling for it. It is happening precisely because nearly all think it cant happen here, God help us. I refer to the former USA.
12:14 pm
I object to the fact that the main subject of this article is the lost gold and not the bodies of th thirty Jews that may also be on the bottom of the lake. I would not be surprised one bit if the Stasi divers saw human bones at the bottom of the lake but ignored them going only for the gold. But must we be as callous? Shouldn’t the object be to recover the bodies so as to give them a decent burial before focusing on the gold?