Netherlands Treasure Hunt

"We don't know for sure if the treasure existed. But the institute did a lot of checks and found the story reliable."

"But they never found it and if it existed, the treasure might very well have been dug up already."

Dutch National Archives spokeswoman Anne-Marieke Samson

 

"I see groups of people with metal detectors everywhere."

"Like a lot of people, the news about the treasure made me go look for myself."

"The chance of the treasure still being here after 70 years is very small I think, but I want to give it a try."

Jan Henzen, 57, Dutch citizen

A map shows possible Nazi treasure in Ommeren, Netherlands.Hollandse Hoogte / Shutterstock

The Dutch National Archive released a map for public scrutiny that was stored in its archival collection since immediately following World War II, when a German soldier was relieved of its possession. Immediately post-war, the Dutch institution was assigned the task of tracing German capital in the Netherlands, finally freed from Nazi occupation in 1945.

 

German officers leave their car to inspect the ruins of the Alstadt quarter of Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 1940. Most of the city burned after aerial bombardment.  Bettmann Archive

Its possession obviously intrigued those in charge of the Archival collection where the map was held in a research file. When the maximum period of withholding the map from public scrutiny had passed this week, it could no longer be held in confidential confinement. The treasure's existence had been rumoured but was never fully confirmed. And though the institute sought on various occasions to find the treasure, three attempts had failed by 1947.

Now,  with the map's release, amateur treasure-hunters have fanned out in numbers armed with metal detectors and shovels wandering through fields around rural Ommeren in the country's east. According to the Archive, the map was believed to indicate where Nazi soldiers buried four large boxes containing diamonds, rubies, gold, silver and jewellery -- all of which had been looted following an explosion at the Arnhem branch of the Rotterdamsche bank when it was bombed in August 1944.

 

A general view of a street in the Dutch village of Ommeren, Netherlands January 6, 2023. REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw

 

Chances are remote that anything at all will be discovered, but that hasn't stopped those who set out determined that if anyone would discover the whereabouts of the treasure, why shouldn't it be they themselves? The town's former mayor is now in charge of a foundation with ownership of the lands in question. He had seen people converge on the land from all over the Netherlands.

And there is this: There were obsequious Dutch Nazi collaborators throughout the country, eager to please the occupiers whose ideology was one they connected with personally. Many of these collaborators were well known personalities in banking and the arts, high in the social strata of the day. With the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allied Forces and the end of the occupation, Netherlands' police and security of the resistance forces searched out the collaborators and enacted the rough justice of a firing squad to the cheers of onlookers.

Some of these collaborators were tracked down, investigated and put on trial and some mounted a vigorous and sometimes successful defense. It is entirely likely that those who escaped punishment or even those who paid the price for their betrayal to the enemy forces had insider knowledge and had already taken possession of the looted, hidden treasure.

 

A Dutch postcard of German soldiers leaving the Netherlands after surrender in May 1945 whose caption reads: ‘Departure of the Herrenvolk [master race]’. Photograph: Culture Club/Getty

 

But hope springs eternal in the human imagination, and though the groups digging feverishly through unyielding soil for treasure now will eventually thin out as days go by and nothing will be exposed, others will remain, determined to find what may or may not still be buried in the hope that their lives will be enriched by a bounteous discovery with an unsavoury past. 

"A map with a row of three trees and a red cross marking a spot where a treasure should be hidden sparks the imagination."

"Anyone who finds anything will have to report it to us, so we'll see."

"But I wouldn't expect it to be easy."

Former Ommeren mayor Klaas Tammes