Treasure map leads hordes of Nazi gold hunters to Dutch village

A Nazi treasure map is bringing visitors and loot hunters to the quiet Dutch village of Ommeren. Photo / Nederlandse Beheersinstituut , Supplied; Jack B, Unsplash

Documents published online by the Dutch National Archive have unwittingly led to a gold rush in a once quiet corner of the Netherlands.

Ommeren in the eastern province of Gelderland has been overwhelmed by visits from treasure hunters and clandestine digs inspired by a Second World War treasure map. The hand drawn document was released last week under the national secrecy act among a trove of other items from the war, suggesting that a field in the Netherlands could be riddled with stolen gold.

State archive documents fall into the public domain after a 75-year confidentiality period. However this latest batch of files has unwittingly sparked a treasure hunt. To the horror of the residents of Ommeren, they are under the X that ‘marks the spot’.

The map is thought to be drawn by retreating German soldiers, who buried their loot south of the Dutch town.

The unearthing of the drawing, 78 years after the end of the war, has led to unintended consequences for the residents, whose land falls near the literal red X.

Locals have complained that evidence of unauthorised digs have appeared overnight.

Ommeren, in the Dutch province of Gelderland, has been overrun by treasure hunters. Photo / Wikimedia Commons

Hedgerows and streets are strewn with discarded bits of metal, presumably found by detectorists covering the ground.

Day trippers and youths have turned up with shovels hoping to get lucky, say some villagers.

Metal detectors are banned in this region of the Netherlands. Close to the German border and the towns of Arnhem and Nijmegen, there is a real danger of detectorists unearthing unexploded bombs.

This has not put off treasure hunters arriving from across the continent to look for the fortune, sometimes in other peoples’ backyards.

The treasure map was among the artefacts declassified this month by the Dutch official secrets. Photo / Nederlandse Beheersinstituut, Supplied

Now villagers are furious with the National Archives.

One resident says she was woken by people with head torches and spades. Petra van Dee, 42, thought she was being burgled last week.

“I cannot sleep,” she told the BBC this weekend. Treasure hunters have turned up, uninvited and dug holes in her garden.

On Saturday the Dutch archivists said that they were surprised by the amount of interest the old documents had stirred up.

Annet Waalkens, a freedom of information adviser for the National Archive, said that if they had known it would unearth such disruption they would have warned the municipality in advance.

Interviewed in the Observer about the accidental treasure hunt, she said that declassifying the map brought almost instant interest from the public.

“A lot of researchers, journalists and amateur archaeologists are really interested and excited,” she said of the 1,300 historical documents which come into the public domain this month.

Personally, she hopes that the treasure is still there, hoping that it might lead to returning it to its rightful owners.

While there is renewed effort to find the loot, almost eight decades on, this is not the first time treasure hunters have been on the case.

Among the papers released by the archive are accounts of the post-war Dutch government trying to look for the Nazi loot. Having failed in 1948, their efforts and the map were classified and protected by the national secrecy act until this month.

So what are they hoping to find?

What’s in the box?

Among the declassified documents was the account of one of German soldiers, “Helmut Sonder”, from Baden Baden.

He and his accomplices from a company of parachutists robbed a Dutch bank during the Allied invasion of Holland.

He recounts ransacking a bomb-damaged bank building, in which he and his comrades had been sheltering, “somewhere to the south west of Arnhem” in August 1944. They stuffed the loot in four spent ammunition boxes made of zinc.

Among the declassified files, German soldier Helmut Sonder confessed to burying a treasure trove in a field. Photo / Nederlandse Beheersinstituut , Supplied

Recalling the contents of the boxes he said there was gold, silver, jewellery, brooches and “Edelsteinen” which the documents describe as “brilliant diamonds”.

14 days before the end of the war, the troop buried the boxes in a field in Holland before surrendering.

It is these four cases, filled with loot from Dutch bank vaults, which have captured the interest of treasure hunters.