From the New York Post, January 6:
The release of a seven-decades-old map thought to indicate where Nazi soldiers stashed millions of euros worth of loot during World War II has set off a wild treasure hunt in the Netherlands — as history buffs and amateur detectives scramble to get their hands on the cache.
Equipped with metal detectors and shovels, sleuths descended in droves on the rural village of Ommeren, where a yellowed map suggests the Nazis buried four boxes of gems and precious metals following a bank explosion in August 1944.
The map, which has been in the custody of the Dutch National Archive since the county was freed from German occupation in 1945, was released this week after a 75-year confidentiality period expired.
“I see groups of people with metal detectors everywhere,” Jan Henzen, 57, told Reuters during a break from his own search....
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That story seems a little too light-hearted.
Meanwhile in Poland, by Professor Piotr Gliński, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Culture and National Heritage.:
Empty Frames - Unhealed Wounds of Polish Museums
Since mid-September, empty frames have been on display in Poland’s largest museums. Empty Frames is an information campaign to remind people about works of art from Polish public, private and church collections that were lost (stolen or destroyed) during World War II. The extent of these losses is enormous. It is estimated that as a result of military operations conducted by Germany and the Soviet Union and thefts carried out on the territory of the Republic of Poland in 1945, over 516 thousand works of art disappeared from Polish collections. Already in 1942, the losses in the museum holdings alone were estimated to amount to 50% of the entire pre-war inventory.
Many works have unfortunately been lost irretrievably. They were destroyed, buried in the ruins of bombed buildings, burnt in fires and damaged by not always accidental bullets. Empty frames in Polish museums are a symbol of lost heritage but also a sign of hope for the return of artwork that was seized, illegally exported and remaining abroad until this day.
It is no coincidence that we inaugurated the Empty Frames campaign in Polish museums right before the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s attack on Poland on 17 September 1939. Doing so, we want to remind people that the Republic of Poland fell victim to not one but two aggressors – Germany and Soviet Russia. Of all the countries involved in World War II, whether occupied or fighting, Poland suffered the greatest losses, not only in lives lost (approximately 6 million killed Polish citizens) but also in culture and art.
Empty frames have so far appeared in 12 museums – the largest national ones and smaller regional institutions and district museums. Boards and signs prepared specially for this campaign remind visitors of the artwork and historical objects looted from these museums during World War II by the invaders from the West and East. As part of the campaign, visitors can also see the original empty frames left behind the looted objects....
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As both an academic and a politician, the good Professor would have been killed by the Germans in their Intelligenzaktion and the subsequent AB-Aktion mass murders (100,000+ victims) of the intelligentsia, intended to decapitate Polish society.
If he had somehow survived that by fleeing east he would have been murdered by the Soviet NKVD, along with some 22,000 others in the Katyn Forest liquidations of the Polish officer corps and intelligentsia class.
