By Tim Binnall
Treasure hunters searching for a cache of gold stolen by the Nazis in WWII say that their efforts have detected a curious five-foot-long canister that could contain the elusive riches. The tantalizing find was reportedly made by an organization known as Silesian Bridge Foundation, which came into possession of a diary that purportedly belonged to an SS officer and included the location of 11 sites where such hidden treasures could be found. News of the journal being unearthed back in June of 2020 understandably garnered considerable skepticism, however, the group pursued the lead nonetheless and the latest development in their hunt for the lost Nazi gold just might confirm that the proverbial treasure map is genuine.
In May of 2021, the group descended upon the grounds of an 18th century palace in the Polish village of Minkowskie, where the diary claimed that 11 tons of hidden Nazi gold could be found and, after a year of searching, the treasure hunters may have finally hit pay dirt. Roman Furmaniak, who heads the Silesian Bridge Foundation, has revealed that ground-penetrating radar used at the site detected a mysterious metal canister that measures around five feet long and approximately one-and-a-half feet in diameter. Making the anomaly all the more intriguing is that the suspected container is buried ten feet deep at the actual spot where the journal said the treasure was located.
For now the canister remains maddeningly out of reach as the treasure hunters await permission from the Polish government to remove the object from the ground and, Furmaniak says, it could take months for such approval to be granted. That said, should they be allowed to extract the canister and if it contains the stolen gold, the recovery of the riches will no doubt spark something of a treasure hunting frenzy as it would seem to suggest that the other ten spots listed in the diary are also hiding hidden riches. As for the pilfered gold, the group stresses that they have no intention of keeping what they find and, instead, they hope to "hand these deposits over to their rightful owners in the interests of world heritage and as an act of atonement for the Second World War."