NOS/Mattijs van de WielFor the last time, the boxes were searched for
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 12:00
No Nazi treasure has been found in Ommeren in Gelderland. The Historical Circle Kesteren and surroundings dug this morning at the last places that were still eligible. The municipality of Buren had given permission for this. The sites were pointed out by a historian. In this area, the search for the treasure has now finally come to an end.
There would be four boxes with jewelry and watches hidden in Ommeren. They are said to have been buried there in 1944 by German soldiers. This came to light in January when an old, sketched map was made public by the National Archives. It contained clues to the treasure.
Lockers with valuables
In August 1944, a bank in Arnhem was hit by a bomb. The contents of a large number of safes were released. German soldiers then filled their pockets with valuables, which they would later have buried in chests near Ommeren.
After the announcement in January, a real hunt for the alleged treasure, which is said to be worth millions, ensued. The municipality banned treasure hunting, but that didn’t stop people from searching with metal detectors and shovels.
The chests have already been searched for in the past. In 1947, the Central Assets Investigation Service did that. But at the time there was no record of exactly where people searched. It cannot be ruled out that the coffins were already excavated during the occupation.
ANPThe sketched map with clues to the treasure
The disappointment is not too bad, she had adjusted to it, says Joke Honders of the Historical Circle Kesteren and surroundings. “We’ll make a booklet of it and then it’s done.”
Honders does not dare to say whether there is actually no treasure buried in Ommeren. “Of course, the soldier who made that map may have imagined a very different place in his mind than it actually was.”
The mystery has not been solved. “That is certainly very beautiful. It is like the Loch Ness Monster, which has never been found, you can compare it to that. The treasure has not been found, but at least we can make a nice story around it. ”
The search in Ommeren is over, but the search for the treasure is not, says Honders. “The question remains where it was taken.”
‘This was it’
Alderman Pieter Neven of the municipality of Buren, which includes Ommeren, has championed the investigation. “This was it,” he says. The municipality funded the research because it was done by a specialized agency in collaboration with the VU in Amsterdam. “To really show whether or not it’s there, in places that are plausible and have now been explored.”
Neven hopes that no more people will come looking. “Also for the people here, because it was not fun what happened when the map became known. People went to dig a hole of one and a half meters on someone else’s property. That is not nice, so people got tired of that.”
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