‘Nazi gold train’ draws treasure hunters to south-west Poland

By The Guardian

Polish authorities have blocked off a wooded area near a railway line after scores of treasure hunters swarmed south-west Poland looking for an alleged Nazi gold train.

The city of Wałbrzych and its surrounding wooded hills are experiencing a gold rush after two men, a Pole and a German, informed authorities through their lawyers that they had found a Nazi train with armaments and valuables that reportedly went missing in the spring of 1945 while fleeing the Red Army.

Inspired by a local legend about the gold train, people with metal detectors and ground-penetrating equipment are combing the area and its still-used railway tracks. Some of them have arrived from Germany.

The gold fever intensified after the deputy culture minister, Piotr Żuchowski, said last week he had seen contours of the train on an image from a ground-penetrating radar device.

The alleged site is somewhere between the 61th and the 65th kilometre of the tracks that wind their way between Wałbrzych and Wrocław.

The provincial governor, Tomasz Smolarz, said on Monday that police, city and railway guards were now patrolling the area and blocking treasure hunters to prevent any accidents with trains running on the tracks.

“A few hectares of land are now being secured. People have been barred from the woods” surrounding the site, he said.

“Half of Wałbrzych’s residents and other people are going treasure hunting or just for walks to see the site. We are worried for their security,” said police spokeswoman Magdalena Koroscik. People walking down the tracks can’t escape “a train that emerges from behind the rocks at 70km/h [43mph].”

A man taking a selfie on the tracks reportedly narrowly missed being hit, she said.

Smolarz is also asking the military to examine the site with earth-penetrating equipment to look for any hidden train.

Authorities said numerous previous reports of a find have only yielded rusty pieces of metal.