(JNi.media) Polish Soldiers and explosives experts on Monday launched a six-day operation to secure the area where authorities suspect a Nazi-era train loaded with looted gold is buried, news agencies are reporting. The soldiers are searching some three feet below the surface, checking for mines or any other dangerous objects, before municipal workers begin excavations come Oct. 3.
A press officer for the local government confirmed in August that a military train had been discovered in Walbrzych, near Poland’s border with the Czech Republic.
Local lore describes a train loaded with valuables that was stored in a tunnel by the retreating Nazis in 1945. In August, the town’s deputy mayor Zygmunt Nowaczyk told reporters: “The city [of Walbrzych] is full of mysterious stories because of its history. [But] now it is formal information — [we] have found something.”
“Our goal is to check whether there’s any hazardous material at the site,” Colonel Artur Talik, who is leading the search for explosives, told RT.
The discovery was made by two amateurs, one Polish, one German, who informed authorities through their attorney that they plan to reveal the location of the train if they were guaranteed a finders’ fee of 10 percent of its value. Marika Tokarska, a Walbrzych city council official, said: “In the documents they sent us, they inform us that they have found a military train from the second World War and that outside the train some guns and weapons can be seen. They also said there could be gold and some other precious things inside.”
The news site wiadomosciwalbrzyskie.pl said the train may contain as much as 300 tons of gold on board.