While there are many steps that need to be taken before the train can be excavated, including finding and defusing explosives, the question is, if there is a treasure, what is it and to whom does it belong? Even before any valuables have surfaced, there has already been some vivid speculation over what is contained inside the mysterious armored train. Journalist Tom Bower, author of “Nazi Gold: The Full Story of the Fifty-Year Nazi Conspiracy to Steal,” says he hopes (and perhaps many Russians do, too), that the armored train contains the famed Amber Room which was stolen by the Nazis from Catherine Palace outside Saint Petersburg in 1941. While there is an expectation that gold and jewels will be found, “I think it is far more exciting to think that (the Amber room) is no the train,” Bower told Sky News. The Amber room, made of amber panels with gold leafing and mirrors, was constructed in the 18th century and was a gift from the Prussian king Frederick William I to the Russian czar Peter the Great. Before it was lost, in World War II, it was considered the Eighth Wonder of the World. The Russians, fearing the Nazis would seize the room’s panels, tried to hide them in paper, but failed to prevent the theft. The Amber room was taken to Konigsberg castle, and has never been seen since. There are conflicting accounts as to whether it still exists or was destroyed as the Red Army invaded the city in 1945.
In the last days of the Second World War, Hitler ordered valuables be moved from Konisberg, which gives credence to the notion that the Amber Room, along with other treasures, might be in the buried train. However, according to one account, before the Amber Room could be transported by the Nazis, Erich Koch, who was supposed to be in charge of the operation, fled from Konigsberg. It wasn’t just the Red Army that pounded Konigsberg, but also the Royal Air Force. The possibility that the Red Army might have unwittingly destroyed the Amber Room is something Russians would find distressing, and there was adamant denial, especially during the Soviet era, that the Soviet army had a hand in destroying the same Amber room. In fact, it was politically useful to encourage the notion that the Amber Room still existed and was being hidden by the Europeans as a way to fan the flames of resentment against the West. During the Cold War, Adelaida Yolkina, researcher at the Pavlovsk Palace, reportedly said, “It is impossible to see the Red Army being so careless that they let the Amber Room be destroyed.”
Leonid Arinshtein, a former Red Army Lieutenant who was at the Battle of Konisberg, said, “I was probably one of the last people who saw the Amber Room.” He denied the Red Army was primarily responsible for the fact the city was on fire, since there were so many artillery bombardments, and said it was unlikely fires were started on purpose, “What soldiers would want to burn a city where they will have to stay?” he asked. In 2004, a study by British investigative journalists Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy concluded that the Amber Room was most likely destroyed in the bombing of Konisgberg, probably by fire from both the Royal Air Force and the Red Army.
The question might not be whether or not the Amber Room was destroyed, but how much of it survived, and could a part of it be on the Nazi gold train? In 1997, an Italian stone mosiac that was part of the Amber room turned up in Germany, and a former German solider said he had helped pack up the Amber Room. Since then, there have been searches for part of the Amber Room that might have survived the war.