Exasperated residents of the Dutch village of Ommeren have appealed to treasure-hunters to stay away after they descended on the area searching for riches allegedly hidden by Nazi soldiers during World War Two. The hunt was triggered by an old map, believed to reveal where German soldiers may have buried ammunition boxes crammed with looted diamonds, rubies, gold and silver. The hand-drawn diagram, complete with a red X to mark the spot, is part of a case file made public by the Dutch National Archive only last week.
The declassified documents include the testimony of a German soldier, who said that a bank in the city of Arnhem, 40km from Ommeren, was hit by a bomb in August 1944, scattering the contents of the vault. Three or four occupying German soldiers pocketed what they could and stashed their haul in ammunition boxes and bread packages. Later, in the last weeks of the war, the German invaders were retreating and the soldiers apparently decided to bury the treasure.
Throughout Ommeren there is evidence of unauthorised excavations. Discarded farming equipment which presumably activated metal detectors is strewn around freshly dug craters, gouged out of farmland and forests. Residents have been woken by strangers with flashlights strapped to their foreheads, furiously plunging spades into their lawn after dark. Petra van Dee, 42, is furious with the Dutch National Archive for releasing the information. 'I cannot sleep. One of the holes they dug in my garden came up to here,' she said, gesturing to her chest.
Metal detectors were recently banned in Ommeren, as there is a real risk of amateur excavators hitting unexploded World War Two grenades, bombs or landmines. Fortunately, no injuries have been reported, but a number of fines have been issued. Even if anyone were to find gold, they would be obliged to declare it and hand it over to the local authority which owns the land. Annet Waalkens, freedom of information adviser at the National Archive, said: 'With every wartime story, there comes tragedy.'
