A Polish official confirmed Friday the discovery of a long-lost Nazi train filled with gold and other treasures, according to a report in the Associated Press.
The booty-filled train has long been a subject of lore in Poland and Germany. The story goes that, “a German train filled with gold, gems and armaments went missing around the city of Walbrzych while it was fleeing the Red Army in the spring of 1945,” according to the report. Various attempts to locate the treasury since the end of World War II have proven fruitless, until a “deathbed statement” from someone who helped load the train revealed its location this week. The identity of the confessor was not revealed by Polish authorities. Piotr Zuchowski, head of conservation of the Polish culture ministry, said only that the man was involved in hiding the train in the first place.
Polish officials used ground-penetrating radar to prove the existence of the train, which is now lodged in an unused tunnel. “We will be 100 percent sure only when we find the train,” the Polish official told the AP.