Navigate to News section

A Nazi Gold Train Buried in Poland? Not So Much.

The search for a mythical Nazi train, believed to have carried riches through a secret tunnel at the end of WWII, yielded nothing but a whole bunch of dirt

by
Jonathan Zalman
August 25, 2016
Natalia Dobryszycka/AFP/Getty Images
A scene from the excavations of the so-called 'Nazi Gold train' in Walbrzych, Poland, August 16, 2016. Natalia Dobryszycka/AFP/Getty Images
Natalia Dobryszycka/AFP/Getty Images
A scene from the excavations of the so-called 'Nazi Gold train' in Walbrzych, Poland, August 16, 2016. Natalia Dobryszycka/AFP/Getty Images

The excavation of a Nazi-era train that has never been confirmed to exist began over a week ago in Poland. The dig was led by explorers Piotr Koper, from Poland, and Andreas Richter, from Germany, who claimed to have located the mythical train—believed to have carried riches for the Nazis toward the end of World War II—in secret tunnels below the Owl Mountains in southwest Poland. The project, however, was fruitless. Well, except for a lot of dirt.

“Unfortunately, the excavation has revealed no train, no tunnel and no trackway in the location where we thought they would be,” said Andrzej Gaik, a spokesman for the dig, who spoke with The New York Times on Wednesday.

So, ho-hum. Maybe there would have been a train, or gold. Or maybe there would have been other horrors, the likes of which I don’t care to know about any more than I already do.

Still, it’s been entertaining to follow Polish reporter Tomasz Borysiuk, who’s had access to the project. Since it began last week, Borysiuk has reported, often in the form of images, about an adit to the Nazi Riese tunnel project and a swastika scrawled insidebig square holes from the dig, an eerie shot of the Polish forest, a press conference announcing the failure, and a beer called “Gold Train,” which I imagine remains uncorked.

in Poland produced a new beer – Gold Train… #goldtrain. pic.twitter.com/qiBjuczPRY



— Tomasz Borysiuk (@TomaszBorysiuk) August 24, 2016

Jonathan Zalman is a writer and teacher based in Brooklyn.