Nazi Treasures Book 3

60 years later

THE SEARCH FOR NAZI TREASURES III. Proposal for an Exploration Project and TV Documentary Series

c 2005 Jaro Sveceny V Podbabe 29a 160 00 Prague 6 Czech Republic jarosveceny@yahoo.com

In every treasure hunt, a Holy Grail emerges, a single object of such astounding value or power the mere suggestion of it will lure men to their deaths. For Sveceny, this Grail is undoubtedly the "Chamber of Amber," considered one of the most valuable of all unrecovered war booty.

III. LIST OF CONTENTS

0

THE PROJECT HISTORY

31

HANS KAMMLER S LAST WILL, September 2002-, Czech Republic/Germany

32

SURVEY OF SUSPECTED TUNNEL SITES, April 23-May 1, 2004, Stechovice

33

CONVOY FROM KALININGRAD, 1997-, Bremen,Germany/Poland

34

STOLEN NUDE, March 2005-, Trnava, Slovak Republic

35

ROSENBERG S TOMB, April 2005-, Vyssi Brod, Czech Republic

36

NSDAP ARCHIVE, June 17, 2005, Brenna, Czech Republic

37

SUDETENLAND CASTLES, November 5-12, 2005 & August 15, 2006; Ceska Lipa, Noovy Berstejn, Houska

38

NAZI OCCULT WORKSHOP, August 16, 2006, Novy Falkenburk

39

FRENCH INTELLIGENCE ARCHIVE, November 5-12, 2005; Horni Libchava

40

METTERNICH S DESCENDENT, January 15, 2007, Plasy

THE PROJECT HISTORY In 1990, an independent producer Jaro Sveceny recorded first scenes of his TV documentary project initiated by intelligence reports suggesting that Czechoslovakia, the last territory still controlled by the Hitler’s army at the end of WWII, became a final destination point for several large shipments of looted European art and secret Nazi documents, some airlifted from encircled Berlin in April 1945.

With only a few leads on hand, Sveceny received a valuable assistance from a former communist agent who played an important role in the searches conducted in Czechoslovakia during the "Cold War." The agent’s experience and knowledge became initially the project’s key asset. In 1990, he led Sveceny’s team to the first success. In an unmarked crypt, they discovered two 18th century coffins, a precious example of a superior medieval artisanship that got lost in chaos of WWII. The agent claimed to be able to guide filmmakers to vastly more sought-after objects.

In the 1980’s, when he worked for the Ministry of Interior, the agent came across interrogation records of captured Nazi officers who took part in the covert operations in occupied Czechoslovakia.

When questioned by the agents of the East German spy organization STASI, some of the officers spoke about a small resort town near Prague, called Stechovice. In 1992, declassified WWII documents deposited at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland revealed that the Allies were well aware of Stechovice significance. In February 1946, twelve American and French commandos guided by a German POW were dispatched on a daring raid deep into the Sovietcontrolled territory. During a swift overnight operation, they got possession of 32 crates with secret Nazi documents from a camouflaged bunker near the town. With the Czech Police in hot pursuit, they were forced to leave without being able to check for other possible shelters in the area.

WWII historians speculate that the crates may have been filled with blue prints of German high-tech weapons. Others believe that the subterranean vaults in Stechovice may still contain hundreds of kilograms of gold stolen from Jewish prisoners. And some hold a faint hope that the treasure includes numbered bank accounts worth billions of dollars in ill-gotten gold. What is known for sure is that during the 1938-45 German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Nazis turned the Stechovice region into the SS weapons training grounds and established an army engineering school there. Nowadays, only a few of the resort’s summer visitors realize that they walk on top of a vast labyrinth of tunnels constructed by German engineers.

Following the fall of the ’Iron Curtain’ and through the 1990’s at least five different groups of explorers set up their paramilitary camps in the hills overlooking the Stechovice Lake, ready to claim what the Germans and than the Americans left behind. Although they managed to unearth several bunkers and a mass grave containing bodies of prisoners and guards executed after completing their work, the missing crates have not yet been found. By 2001, a talk of an imminent discovery quieted down. Due to an endless bureaucratic red tape and a soaring cost of the search, the privately organized expeditions were forced to quit.

Paradoxically, a man long considered an underdog by his competition became the last lonely runner in the Stechovice treasure race. Josef Muzik, a small wiry Czech came to town in 1991 with a metal detector and a few friends in high places. He persevered by surrounding himself with a group of dedicated volunteers and by keeping the cost of his undertaking at a minimum. Over the years, he has been methodically exploring a 240 square-kilometer area narrowing the search. His survivalist instinct and dedication led him to some interesting finds.

It is somehow fitting that in this mix of history and high adventure a treasure hunter and a TV producer created a close working bond-combining experience from totalitarian control and Czech bureaucracy with American television know-how. An intriguing mystery of Stechovice’s missing crates became an important part of Sveceny’s TV project.

Many more stories of German war atrocities and plunder have been added after 1993 when Sveceny expended his production into several other locations in Czech Republic that were high on his informer’s list.

THE HITS AND THE MISSES The results achieved by Sveceny’s team of filmmakers and amateur explorers during the 1990’s were encouraging. They also proved that Stechovice was only one of several locations in Czech Republic worth of exploring.

In addition to the baroque coffins of the Italian Archduchess Maria Francesca de Tuscany and her husband, the team consisting mostly of young American expats usually trading their services for a shot of adrenalin, stumbled over a large cache of German rifles, machine guns and hand grenades.

In cooperation with Swedish scuba divers, they lifted a part of Goering’s sculpture collection from a lake near Berlin. They found a Jewish medallion in a Nazi officer’s briefcase left in a Stechovice attic with two Swiss bank account numbers carved to its rim. A bewildered field researcher working for Sveceny in Romanian city Constanta was led to several master paintings stolen by a Holocaust survivor from an abandoned German truck. The paintings, now passing a scrutiny by art experts are suspected to have been stolen by the Nazis from a private French impressionistic collection owned by a Yugoslavian Jew Erich Schlomowitch. The team traced down an underground Messerschmit fighter jet factory in Sumava National Park. Acting on a tip from an eyewitness, several team members dived into the Stechovice Lake and found a sealed off tunnel, that may be hiding a number of stolen Czech antiquities.

Sveceny had also filmed at the sites searched previously by the communist security forces. He followed in the footsteps of the agents who discovered priceless St. Moor’s reliquary box hidden by an escaping Nazi colaboratorator under his Becov castle’s chapel floor. With his team, he succeeded in piecing together a true story of the 1960’s KGB misinformation plot - an orchestrated ’discovery’ of authentic Nazi documents in the Black Lake. The filmmakers came across a hideout rigged with booby traps and they got lost in an old burial grounds under a gothic church. Their ex-agent guide led them to a huge underground plant "Richard" built by the Nazis in the dying days of WW2. Hundreds of concentration camp inmates perished working there on the Hitler’s "weapon of revange."

A cast of strange, colorful characters has haunted their every step. From old communist guards and double agents to Reich Marshall Goering’s daughter; from African medicine-man to American map dowsers; from police psychics to dissident clergymen, from WW2 veterans to self-proclaimed South American businessmen speaking with a heavy German accent From Hollywood directors to the Nazi sympathizers.

According to the Czech law, a 10% finder’s fee is due to anyone who discovers objects of archeological or historical value. Unfortunately, for Sveceny, the Czech government has had neither the time to explore his claim, nor the money to pay the promised fee. Twelve years after Sveceny’s discovery of the medieval coffins, the Czech Ministry of Culture continues to postpone its official confirmation, and the hollow eyes of the skulls in a secret tomb still gaze into the darkness.

PRESENT STATUS Sveceny’s perseverance and dedication have earned him the trust and confidence of everyone from the ex-KGB agents to Holocaust survivors. His house in Prague has become a sort of clearinghouse for information seekers worldwide. Occasional updates posted on the web gave the project some much-needed publicity. A flow of eyewitness’ accounts, offers of volunteer help by WW2 researchers, writers, historians, even by former Allies’ intelligence officers started to pour in.

In summer 2002, an Irish writer Colm Lowery raised the stakes of Sveceny’s project by providing him with an exclusive information on Hans Kammler’s (a chief of the German weapon program)

activities in Czech Republic. A shadowy figure of the Hitler’s inner circle was seen in Stechovice just days before the "V" day. Lowery, who is in the process of finishing the General’s biography, claims to have got a proof that Kammler, before setting up a deal with the Americans turned to the Stechovice SS Weapons Engineering School’s commander Emil Klein to hide his blueprints that would eventually buy him a freedom.

In September 2002, rumors of the legendary "Amber Room," reckoned the most valuable of all unrecovered war booty, led a team of Czech deep sea divers working with Sveceny to explore the wreckage of the German passenger ship "Wilhelm Gustloff." It was sunk in 1945 by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea carrying 10,000 German refugees on board. Although the seven-daylong expedition did not produce hard evidence that the "Amber Room" rests in the shipwreck, the unique footage of the disaster’s apocalyptic scene further enhanced production values of Sveceny’s TV project.

While the elaborate 300th anniversary celebration of the "Chamber’s" birth was organized in Pushkino Palace near St. Petersburg on May 31, 2003, Sveceny was busy drafting plans with J. Muzik for an expedition in the West of Poland, which as they hope, will lead to a discovery of the original. A map drawn by a Nazi officer who accompanied a transport of antiquities looted in Russia has the bunker location with the unloaded precious cargo clearly marked. The twenty-seven crates with a dismantled "Chamber of Amber" were supposedly part of it. The veracity of this claim by the Nazi officer’s widow was tested by a geological survey of the location conducted last year.

At the beginning of 2003, with all but one expedition long gone, Stechovice revealed little of the drama it has been hosting. Hills overlooking the lake were drenched after massive floods and the only paved road into town swallowed by the torrents had been impassible for months. Sveceny’s team returned to the familiar grounds at the end of March alarmed by a call from Josef Muzik. He noticed that a 3 x 3 meter square area near the shaft constructed at a great expense by one of the past expeditions had dropped by 50 cm within just 24 hours. The lure of finding the elusive Nazi hideout made the filmmakers drop their cameras and arm themselves with diggers and shovels. Two days later, their excavation was abruptly halted when a large tunnel entrance emerged nine meters deep. The cameraman who crawled in first soon reemerged reporting that a web of electric wires was blocking the way and presented a threat of activating the tunnel’s safeguarding system. Safety measures and logistics of close inspection have to be worked out and the city permits issued before any further progress can be made.

A major breakthrough came in 2004 when Sveceny returned to a small gothic church in the village Brenna. A suspicion that the church was used by retreating Nazis to hide important documents was confirmed by a discovery of the Sudetenland Nazi Party’s archive (3000 membership cards), 1.5 m deep under the church floor.

In a close cooperation with an American art historian searching for the art looted during the war in Budapest, the two men negotiated a recovery of a painting by a French realist Gustav Courbet in Slovakian town of Trnava. It was traced to the famous pre-WWII collection of the Hungarian Baron Hatvany. The painting is rumored to enter the Sotheby s Fall auction in New York for a staggering USD 15 million.

In 2005, Sveceny met one of the pre-eminent American researchers and WWII historians Patricia K. Grimsted. The scholar, decorated for her pioneering work in the recovery of important book collections and manuscripts looted by the Nazis, started supplying Sveceny with copies of original documents from until recently impenetrable Soviet and German military archives in Moscow.

As a result, a joint Sveceny/Grimsted expedition in summer 2006 was able to identify in a short succession four castles near the Polish border that played an important role at the end of WWII. While two of the castles had been used to store valuable book collections and rare manuscripts from several occupied Western European nations, the third one had become a temporary shelter for the French intelligence archive dragged there by the Nazis all the way from

Paris. The fourth castle has an intriguing history of having been turned in 1944 into an occult workshop headed by a close Himmler s aid, Hans Richter. The plans were drafted to use the castle s hughe cellars as a lab to continue a research of the heavy water when the British were about to land in Norway.

TV/FILM EXPLOITATION Approx. 20 hours of original video footage has been produced so far. In addition, hours of unique archive material, police recordings, amateur videos, etc. were acquired from Czech and foreign sources. Since Sveceny plans to continue his search expeditions for at least two more years, new exclusive story material will be added along the way.

A rich and unique material combines a thrill of discovery with high educational values and it presently covers 40 individual stories, each of which stands on its own merits. They can be shown individually or in a series of programmes with a common denominator.

Due to an unpredictable nature of the search development, no specific visual or narrative style has been applied during the production. In order to meet broadcaster’s programming needs the material can be assembled in a number of different ways ranging from hard-breaking news to short docs; from a docudrama to a mystery; from a MOW to a TV Special; from a TV series to a feature.

CURRENT OBJECTIVES a. b. c.

To secure funding for the Project’s continuation and/or To conclude production agreement with an international producers or broadcasters To produce several TV programs based on "The Search for Nazi Treasures" project

Jaro Sveceny, Producer Spring 2007

31 Hans Kammler's Testament

September 2002-, Czech Republic/Germany

A German lawyer made the claim suggesting that General Hans Kammler, officially reported as missing since April 1945 had in fact lived after WW II under protection of the Czechoslovakian communist security forces and with a full knowledge of both US and Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia until his death in 1972. This after opening Kammler’s supposed last will and testament which apparently also contained Swiss bank account numbers and site maps of hidden Nazi weapons program blue prints. The document has so far successfully passed forensic tests.

Described previously as " one of the most unscrupulous careerists ever to wear an SS uniform", by the end of WWII, Hans Kammler was without a doubt one of the most powerful men in Germany’s Third Reich. He had replaced Albert Speer as Hitler’s chief of Germany’s armaments and was a commander of all the V weapons and other high technology weapons programs. Kammler was responsible for the construction of the massive subterranean factories, which employed hundreds of thousands of concentration camp inmates to relocate the Third Reich’s ultra secret weapons programs to the safety of these underground cities.

Stretching from the uranium mines of central Germany to the forests of Upper Silesia in Poland Kammler’s work was protected by a triple ring of security and protected ruthlessly by the Sonderstab Kammler (Special Group Kammler,) which raced desperately in the closing weeks of WWII, to field the wonder weapons which would deliver Germany from the jaws of defeat. There was talk of atomic weapons research, death rays weapons based on Tesla technology and supersonic aircraft capable of delivering their atomic payload to American cities from the edge of space. These revelations fly in the face of conventional history, which has taught us that Germany’s atomic program was a failure.

What has confounded researchers, however, has been the sheer lack of documentation regarding Kammler and his projects. Kammler’s official trace is lost amidst the rubble and confusion of Prague in May 1945. He left behind him 5 versions of his death and what is most remarkable is that after the war neither the Americans nor the Russians seemed to be particularly interested in this man. The official files on Kammler’s projects are closed in the US National Archives and are to remain there for another 25 years.

Statements from his immediate family confirm that the Allies had made contact with Kammler offering him a deal in exchange for his survival. This is a fact that the Allied authorities have always strenuously denied. Bringing together evidence from former Military Intelligence officers, historians and researchers, and a prominent German legal source, we will attempt to tell the true story of Dr Kammler. Evidence presented will clearly show how Kammler, with the help of others in the German High Command, masterminded the escape of the Nazi elite following the end of hostilities in Europe in May 1945.

As thousands of concentration camp prisoners died under his command Kammler was busy overseeing Operation Eagle Flight, which ensured the safe transport of Nazi treasures to their final resting places. Gold, jewels and treasures of unimaginable wealth poured into secret coded bank accounts bearing his name. These hidden bank accounts have remained a secret until now, a fact even the Swiss banks will not deny. Kammler also secured a peace deal with the Allies, transferring Germany’s high technology weapons programs to the US. Openly disobeying Hitler’s ’scorched earth’ command Kammler ensured the safe transfer of the German rocket scientists into Allied hands as well as the intact secret weapons facilities in their fully operational status.

32 The Survey of Suspected Tunnel Sites Stechovice, April 23-May 1, 2004

Jeffrey E. Patterson of San Diego, CA, a geological engineer and a Ph.D. candidate in Geophysics visited upon J. Sveceny’s invitation Stechovice to conduct a survey that would determine if current technical capabilities of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) could adequately measure existence of three suspected Nazi era tunnels. Previous surveys using less sophisticated versions of GPR and Electromagnetic (EM) devices indicated that GPR would be successful for the intended purpose.The equipment used during Patterson’s survey consisted of the Geophysical Survey Systems’ (GSSI) SIR-II digital GPR and a GSS 300MHz (central frequency) broadband shielded antenna. Scans of a known test line were comparable with previously measured scans.

Site 1 - Collapsed Shaft in Forest The first scan site consisted of a forested area near the shaft that emerged after record-breaking flooding in summer 2002. The geology consisted of approximately 6 meters of saturated sandy loam soil profile overlying an intensely folded and faulted limestone formation of approximately Permian age. The vegetation consisted of dense pine trees. All scans were conducted along existing unpaved roadways to determine a direction of the tunnel originating at the shaft’s bottom, 9 meter deep. No discernible geologic or man-made structures were apparent on the scans due to the high moisture content of the sandy soil. The watertable appeared at about 5 meters. Obtaining GPR data in this type of geologic strata proved practically impossible.

Note: The shaft was discovered by a Stechovice forester when a large section of soil dropped by 50 em, exposing its square-shaped mouth. 9-meters deep, the explorers reached its floor and found a partially collapsed tunnel entrance. Fear of possible booby traps blocking the entry may force them to opt for a safer but costly alternative - to construct a new access to the tunnel in some distance from the existing shaft.

Site 2 - Marble Desk Tunnel and Field The second scan area was a plowed agricultural field adjacent to a narrow vegetated ravine containing a small one-story house with a garden, located at the ravine’s upper part. Physical features observed in the plowed field included a 1 meter diameter reinforced concrete storm drain manhole with 75 centimeter diameter reinforced concrete inlet and outlet pipes running roughly east I west; a rectangular (1m x 2m) concrete manhole containing a 25 cm cast iron water main running roughly east I west about 20 meters south of the storm drain line and an interrupted 15 cm cast iron water pipe running roughly north I south; and an unpaved two track access road running roughly east I west. No attempt was made to find the final outlet of the storm drain pipe. The scans were made along the track of the unpaved access road. The GPR was setup approximately in line with the suggested extension of the assumed tunnel scan. Each GPR scanline was approximately 55 m in length.

Anomaly 1 is of the Iron Pipe variety, a short, ringing, hyperbola. Anomaly 2 is of the Tunnel Roof variety and was investigated further. Subsequent scans in both directions, in the other track, and along a chain link fence closer to the garden produced similar shaped anomalies. This anomaly is important because it starts below and cuts the watertable, indicating a man-made structure.

Although one would expect an equally shaped hyperbola response from a uniformly shaped tunnel; this one-sided arc is most probably due to a change in topography along the route of scan, as the roadway dips 1 meter over the length of the are, or due to a slanted tunnel roof as observed in other existing storage tunnels in the village of Hradistko, or both. To verify the nature of these anomalies, a Hilbert Transform was applied to the scan. This transform provides a depiction of the instantaneous phase and frequency changes, (Figures 3 and 4, File 64P and File 64F, 4/10/99 - Note: The clock on the processing software was set for pre-2000 due to program Y2K limitations). Knowledge of these changes provides a clearer image of the anomalous feature. In this case, Anomaly 1, an iron pipe, shows clear 90 degree phase and frequency changes at about 2m. The frequency change

is consistent with a water filled iron pipe. Anomaly 2, the suspected tunnel, shows a clear phase shift starting at about 6 m and arching upwards along a linear path of about 3 m to an apparent depth of 3.5 m. The frequency shift is consistent with an air filled void starting at about 5 m and arching upwards along a linear path of about 2 m to an apparent depth of 4 m. The differences in these depths and lengths is due to the "look-ahead /Iook behind" radiation pattern of the transmitting and receiving antennas. The phase shift is much more noticeable than the frequency change. These changes support the interpretation of an air filled tunnel about 2 m wide at a nominal depth of 4.5 m.

Note: The house and the garden were searched by communist agents in the mid-50’s. The captured Stechovice SS commander Emil Klein then claimed that approx. 9-meter long tunnel runs from the ravine outward into the field. According to Klein, it housed 30 crates of gold, jewelry and important technical data from the German weapon research. Although the agents eventually discovered a small bunker with a marble name plaque of the SS officer Thinn attached to its wall, the tunnel has never been found.

Site 3 - Mednik Hill North The next area to be scanned was a suspected concrete bunker along a paved road in the forested area of Mednik Hill. Figures 5,6, and 7 (Files 5, 18, and 22 - 4/25/04) provide interpreted images of this suspected bunker. Figure 5 (File 5 - 4/25/04) is of a scan along the edge of a north / south paved road. A metal rain gutter at the right edge of the figure provides a marker for the position of the central subhorizontal anomaly at about 2.7m that runs for about 2 m. This anomaly also shows a disturbance above this level consistent with typical earth moving operations. Figure 6 (File 18 - 4/25/04) is of a scan about 10 m east of the paved road and shows this same subhorizontal anomaly at about 3.7 m also running for about 2 m. This depth is consistent with a topographic increase in the scan line of about 1 m. The quality of the data is decreased due to this increase in depth. Figure 7 (File 22 - 4/25/04) is a scan about 10 m further east in the same north / south orientation. This scan shows an anomaly between 1 and 2 m for a lineal distance of 10m. The high energy return of this anomaly is consistent with a water filled space, such as one would find at the top of a concrete filled void. The interpreted total shape of these anomalous areas is consistent with an entrance-way at the edge of the road expanding to a circular bunker with a nominal diameter of 5 m. No anomaly was observed in the north/south scans on the far (west) track of the paved road nor on an east/west scan south of suspected bunker.

Note: A clandestine operation took place in Mednik Hill in fall 1989. The exclusive communist weapon exporter ’OMNIPOL’ joined forces here with the international insurance giant FUJIYAMA and under a veil of top secrecy, they conducted in the quiet, uninhibited area extensive excavation for almost two months. Since little has been known about the purpose or the outcome of this venture, halted shortly after the fall of communism in November 1989. Klein’s interrogation records serve as the only possible hint for this unusual alliance. There, the SS officer who masterminded construction of the entire Stechovice underground, refers to Mednik Hill as the location holding all answers to what was hidden in this region by the Nazis. The current Patterson’s survey was conducted in a distance of approx. 5 meters from a large crater, filled by the explorers with tons of concrete upon expedition’s abrupt ending.

SITE 4 - Mednik North - POW Camp The last area scanned was a hillside south of a known POW Camp in the region of Mednik North.

The leveled area is quite obvious, as is a waste rock dump on the northeast edge of the leveled turn-around. Figure 9 (File 35 - 4/26/04) is of a scan of a linear anomalous zone about 2 m wide and 30 m long ending in an outcrop with vertical faces similar to what one would expect at the top lenten of a tunnel entrance. The anomalous zone has all the features of a typical tunnel or a sheared geologic zone in the rock mass. The following day (4/27/04) this potential entrance was excavated to a depth of 1 m with no positive results. It was decided to bring in mechanical

equipment to further investigate this anomaly.

Note: The French POWs spent in Mednik North the entire spring 1944 by blasting a leveled area for trucks’ to turn around. They built also a storage tunnel in the hillside.

CONCLUSION J. Patterson suggested that future surveys include lower frequency GPR (35 to 70 MHz), Proton Magnetometry (PM), EM, Transient Electromagnetic (TEM), or Induced Polarization (IP). Tunnel location methods are actively being researched by the United States Departments of Energy (DOE) and Homeland Security (DHS). Patterson’s company, Geophysical Survey Systems (GSSI) has several proposals for this work being currently evaluated. Hopefully the results of this research can be applied to future surveys.

SITE 1 - Collapsed Shaft in Forest

Site 2 Marble Desk, Tunnel

SITE 3 - Mednik Hill SITE 4 - Mednik North - POW Camp

33 The Convoy from Kaliningrad 1997-, Bremen,Germany/Poland

In 1997, the German police in Bremen arrested a man selling a gold-framed mosaic of marble and semi-precious stones depicting two couples lounging in a garden with their dogs. The asking price was US 2, 5 million. Art experts concluded that the 50x70 cm large piece was one of the four panels symbolizing human senses, once a part of the legendary Amber Room. Dismantled and taken away from the palace in Tsarskoje Selo near St. Petersburg by the German army in 1941, it vanished without trace.

Peter Schultheiss, the Potsdam police chief posing as a prospective buyer was first given a videotape of the mosaic and later samples of the wooden frame and resin that used to hold the tiles.

Two months passed and the meeting to physically examine the mosaic was held above a shop in Bremen, with the police stationed outside. The arrested seller was a Bremen attorney Manhard Kaiser who claimed that he acted on behalf of his client whom he refused to identify. He told the investigators that the mosaic’s original holder, a Wehrmacht driver got it in 1941 when German military vehicles carrying a looted art from Russia came under Red Army fire near Kalliningrad and a few objects fell off. After WWII, it hung for years over a sofa in his apartment. After the man’s death in 1978, his son stored the mosaic in the basement. After seeing a TV documentary on the Amber Room, he realized its value and decided to sell it. The hopes that this find may lead to a discovery of the Amber Room did not materialize. In May 2000, in a gesture of reconciliation the mosaic was returned to Russia. The issue of trophy art has been a sore point in German-Russian relations since the end of WWII. Both sides looted museums, libraries, castles and churches as their troops advanced, and the Amber Room stood always high on Russia’s list of 40,000 art objects it wants back from Germany.

In spring 2002, an elderly woman helped by her son and followed by a big beastly looking dog, walked into a hotel lobby in Koln drawing immediate attention. They were met there by two waiting men. The younger one, a manager of a Swiss bank in Bern introduced his companion, a mustached man in his fifties. Josef Muzik, gained international media attention due to his search for Nazi archives and war loot in Czech Republic. He was invited to this meeting to provide a professional expertise. A few months earlier the mother and her son asked the bank in Bern for a large loan. They offered an old German military map as a collateral. It was a part of a small inheritance left by her late husband. At the end of WWII, he was assigned to a guard unit accompanying a convoy of six trucks transporting war loot from Russia to an unspecified destination in Germany. The convoy originated in Kaliningrad and drove for a couple of days on the highway to Bydgosz. It ended its journey eighty miles further to the west at the German defense line built to stop Russian advance to the very heart of Hitler’s Reich. The line stretched for a couple hundred miles from the Baltic shore in a southward direction. The cargo was supposedly unloaded into a large bunker serving as a command post.

Notes by the woman’s husband contained detail instruction on establishing the bunker’s exact location. In 2003, a small exploratory team visited Poland to set up logistics for a September expedition. Driving through a vast uninhibited area and using the old German military map to guide them, the group lead by the Czech treasure hunter managed to locate a kidney-shaped lake, vital to determine the position of the bunker.

At first sight, nothing around showed signs of the former German defenses. About eight-meter-high platform, marked on the military map as Grunberg was missing on any of the current German or Polish maps of the area. It was rising from miles of a flat uninhibited landscape. In a short distance, a nature park ranger had renovated an old farmhouse and turned it into a comfortable dwelling. He was dividing his time between an upkeep of several small lakes and putting finishing-touches on his house. He pointed out to the explorers several camouflaged concrete bunkers overgrown by a bush and a dried out well sitting at

the top of the platform. In the German guard’s notes, what looked like a well was airshaft for the bunker hidden deep underneath. The ranger, in his twenty fourth year of service seemed to know little about the area’s WWII history and volunteered to get for the expedition permits allowing to engage in exploratory work. Upon the group’s return to Prague, preparations for the expedition started immediately. Then the Swiss banker called in with surprising news. Both of his clients and our key witnesses in the case, the guard’s wife and her son suddenly died only two months apart.

The elderly woman died after a short illness while her son perished in a car accident soon after. The bank withdrew its support for the project and the expedition was postponed indefinitely.

34 The Stolen Nude March 2005-, Trnava, Slovak Republic

It is the year 1945. There is no one to remove February snowdrift in the streets of Budapest. People sit quietly at home hoping that everything is going to be fine. The bloody front marches through the city. Two lorries full of soldiers emerge from the distant wing and stop in front of one of the city banks. The commando has a clear objective; their task is to get directly to the vaults...

This is how an entangled story of the loss and recent rediscovery of the 1862 painting by the French realist, Gustave Courbet "Nude in White Stockings," began. It was acquired in 1913 by the wealthy Hungarian aristocrat Ferenc Hatvany. His private art collection, unparalleled in Central Europe consisted of about 750 major paintings including 9 Monets, 8 Courbets, 20 Corots and 6 Ingres. The "Nude in White Stocking" was hanging in the reception room of the Hatvany villa until 1942. Realizing a grave danger to his Jewish family, Mr. Hatvany decided to escape fascist Hungary, entrusting his accountant to deposit part of his collection in the vaults of a Budapest bank. The paintings left in the villa were soon stolen by the "art loving" Nazis. But the major part of Hatvany’s collection rested safely in the bank vaults until February 1945. Then it was "set free" together with the city, by the members of the Soviet Red Army.

A train filled with a precious cargo of looted Hungarian antiques, took off for Moscow in March 1945.

Making its way through Slovakia, it interrupted its journey for several days when the railroad near Trnava was blown up. While it was being repaired, the commanding officer sent a group of soldiers suffering from a stomach poisoning to a local doctor for a treatment. A painting pulled out from the train was cut out from its frame and delivered to the doctor as a reimbursement for his services. For the next sixty years, "Nude in White Stockings" found a new home. The doctor’s modest house was graced with a presence of a painting by one of the world’s great masters In order to come to terms with the past and to resolve numerous restitution claims, the Hungarian Ministry of Culture published in 1998 a list of all registered and stolen works of art that disappeared during the 1938-1949 period. Based on this information, the 75x 95 cm "Nude in White Stocking" was registered in London’s "The Art Loss Register" together with the rest of Hatvany’s collection as a war loss.

Almost three years later, Sotheby’s auction house was approached by a mysterious Mr. Bills. He offered to sell "undoubtedly authentic" Gustave Courbet. London office found out quickly that the "Nude in White Stockings" was registered as stolen. Offered to verify its authenticity, its experts traveled to Trnava near the Slovak capital Bratislava. Then, a local antique trader Mr. Vladim r Krutek came to the scene as the painting’s holder.

In Krutek’s house, Sotheby’s experts inspected the painting and took a digital photograph, until then the only evidence of its existence. Consequently, Sotheby’s contacted The Commission for Art

Recovery in New York regarding possible agreement between the painting’s holder and the Hatvany’s heirs. The heirs were willing to pay to Mr. Krutek EUR300,000 as remuneration or "compensation" for his help in the painting recovery. But, Mr. Krutek kept making unreasonable requests and with the help of Mr. Bills, the "Nude in White Stockings" was successively offered to galleries all around the world. Mr. Krutek asked all or nothing. Few months later, the painting’s actual holders were identified - two brothers inherited the Courbet’s painting from their father who treated Red Army soldiers in 1945. They chose a local free-wheeling art trader to sell the painting for them. Speaking no English and clearly out of his league, Mr. Krutek nevertheless has managed to hold much stronger opposition at bay for several years. He has threatened the legal counsel of the Hatvany’s heirs several times that he will destroy the painting, unless they accede to his requests.

At first sight, the theft made 60 years ago may seem to be trivial. However, a theft of a painting during the Holocaust era had been and still is a crime. The Slovak Republic, with the accession to the EU, assumed, inter alia, an obligation to take without any delay any steps necessary for proper and just settlement of relationships in case there is an owner or heirs of property which was confiscated by Nazis during the war. Given the customary procedures and standards in the acquisition of similar works of art in the world and clear facts of the case "Nude in White Stockings", no one may, except for lawful heirs of the baron Ferenc Hatvany, make an affidavit that the painting is in his ownership. Under Article I of the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity signed on 26 November 1968 in New York, a party to which is also the Slovak Republic, no statutory limitation apply to war crimes and crimes against humanity, as defined in the Nuremberg Charter, irrespective of the date of their commission. In a civilized country, these are sufficient grounds for an active interest from the side of the relevant bodies. Therefore in May 2004, The Commission for Art Recovery initiated an action for the suspicion of committing a war crime, receiving of stolen property, efforts for illegal sale, threats to destroy property of another. In spite of that, in March, 2005, four years after the re-emergence of Gustave Courbet’s painting, an unlikely player still seems to be controlling the situation. Mr. Krutek, who several months ago fired his own lawyer, now refuses to communicate even with the American art expert who presented his case to The Commission for Art Recovery (CAR) and succeeded in negotiating the reward amount up by 100%. Krutek has been so far avoiding a face to face meeting with the Commission’s lawyer to arrange for the exchange. But with INTERPOL, FBI and The Art Loss Register closely monitoring the situation from the sidelines, it seems to be only a question of time before the Courbet’s nude see the sunlight again after 60 years.

35 Rosenberg's Tomb April 2005-, Vyssi Brod, Czech Republic

In 1940, Adolf Hitler designated the 13th century Cistercian monastery in Vyssi Brod as one of the Germany’s three repositories of the art looted all over the occupied Europe. A year later, the abbey, for centuries a spiritual and cultural centre of Southern Bohemia, was turned into an impenetrable stronghold ringed with fortified gates and guarded by a special SS unit. The walls were painted green to offset air attacks by the Allies and the entry was allowed only to a chosen few.

The art objects shipped to Vyssi Brod by Nazi curators were pre-selected for an ambitious project planned for the Austrian city of Linz. It is estimated that a total of about 5350 paintings, 1039 prints, 95 tapestries, 237 cases of books and manuscripts, 68 sculptures, 32 cases of coins, 125 items of arms and 64 items of furniture were gathered on Hitler’s direct orders for the art museum he wanted to open at his birthplace. Some of the objects were purchased; some were acquired through confiscation of Jewish collections. Safeguarded in the Vyssi Brod monastery were many priceless works by the world masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Breughel and Rembrandt. The editors of the German magazine "GEO" claim that even the lost Russian icon - the "Amber Room" was briefly stored there before its final disappearance. True art jewels were sometimes mixed with odd items of questionable value such as a two-meter-tall bronze elephant, confiscated from a Jewish family in Berlin or a plain office desk used by Hitler for signing of the infamous 1938 Munich Pact.

Shortly before the US Army liberated Vyssi Brod in April 1945, the Nazis moved most of the collection across the Austrian border to Alt See salt mines near Salzburg. Americans thus rescued only a fraction of what was hidden in the abbey during the war. Twelve executed SS guards were also discovered near the monastery. They had to die to keep the details of this operation secret.

After WWII, Cistercian monks returned to Vyssi Brod and in 1949, Father Jaksch was appointed the apostolic administrator of Rein. However, in the aftermath of the communist coup, the abbey was closed down again, this time for the full forty years. P. Frantisek Xaver Kareu and several other monks were arrested on fabricated charges of conspiring to overthrow the government and sentenced to a six-year prison term. Following their release in 1956, Kareau returned to the area and continued his clerical work in the Malonty church, near Vyssi Brod.

Due to its WWII history, the monastery did not escape attention of the communist intelligence. Its agents had combed the entire complex of buildings for what the Germans and than the Americans might have left behind. Their search focused on locating the tomb of the Czech aristocratic family the Rosenbergs, suspected of having been used by the Nazis to hide some of the loot and documents. In 1962, the agents brought father Kareau back to Vyssi Brod to help them find the crypt built in 1270 by the monastery founders. While Kareau thought that the entrance was in the evangelic part of the presbytery, right under the abbot’s chair, other monks pointed out to the section where novices kneel before the mess - on the left side of the entrance to the chancel. Since neither of the two spots produced expected results, the search was eventually abandoned. For the next forty years, the Czechoslovakian Army became the Vyssi Brod monastery’s new tenants using it as a training facility for new draftees.

According to the church records, forty members (23 men and 17 women) of the once powerful Czech aristocratic family were buried in the abbey from 1262-1611. The placement of a crypt usually followed a medieval belief of resurrection and a desire to be as close to the centre of redemption (symbolized by the main alter) as possible. Since 1611 when the last of the kin, Petr Vok died and was buried in Vyssi Brod, the Rosenberg’s tomb has not been officially opened and the records of its exact location vanished. According to a well-educated Czech Jesuits historian Bohuslav Balbin (1621-1688), some members of the Rosenberg’s clan were seated in chairs rather than resting in coffins.

In 1902, the main altar’s right side dropped by ten centimeters and during a ground inspection a vault approx. 5 meters long, 3 meters wide and 1,5 meters high was discovered one-meter under the tiled floor. Two tin coffins, one of which belonged to Peter Vok were discovered together with several wooden ones, rotten and disarranged. The crypt was immediately closed since there was a danger that it may collapse. Czech historians were unable to explain why the vault, thought to be the actual Rosenberg’s tomb contained only a few coffins when the church records proved otherwise.

The Cistercian order returned to the abbey only after the fall of communism in 1990 and within a few year period restored this unique cultural monument to its past glory. Today, the monastery serves again to its original purpose, while the magnificent gothic church, the gallery with over 100 paintings by baroque masters and the unique library containing 70 000 volumes are opened to the public.

During my brief tenure in Vyssi Brod as an army conscript in the mid-1960’s, I had noticed vehicles dropping off a small group of civilians by the monastery main gate. Armed with picks and shovels, the visitors quickly disappear behind the massive door of the "Ascension of St. Mary" church in the courtyard. Only recently, during my work on "The Hunt for Nazi Treasures" have I learned the true purpose of those strange visits.

My ex-agent collaborator guiding me safely through a labyrinth of Nazi and communist convoluted stories and deception admitted to have been a member of the Czech Intelligence Service task force detached in Vyssi Brod. He went on to describe endless hours spent in the freezing church trying to detect the aristocratic family’s tomb with a makeshift equipment in a possession of the ’elite’ unit of the Warsaw Pact’s member country. On his own, he had spent many days in the monastery’s library, flipping through pages of old manuscripts in a hope to find a clue to the Rosenberg’s mystery.

On the day of my birthday, he presented me with an unexpected gift - a hand drawn picture of a threestory deep crypt, he pulled out from a book found in Vyssi Brod library. From the drawing, it became clear that the vault discovered in 1902 was in reality the original Rosenberg’s tomb or rather its upper part. The danger of the vault’s sudden collapse did not allow the workers enough time to discover the second and the third floors hidden underneath. It is apparent from the drawing that more than one hundred people had been buried there, their names and dates of their death written on the left and right sides of the drawing.

It is unlikely that the SS guards stationed in the Vyssi Brod monastery for almost three years would engage in the search for the graves of the Czech nobility and than dare to use the tomb to hide their secrets. However, we approached the elders of the Cistercian order to discuss a possibility of exploring the Rosenberg s burial site one more time.

36 NSDAP Membership Archive June 17, 2005, Brenna, Czech Republic

Our second visit to the St. John the Baptist’s church in Brenna, originally planned for spring 2002 had to be postponed indefinitely. Decades of neglect caused its centuries old roof to cave in leaving the floor buried under tons of rubble. The Institute of Preservation which has done little to save the church from a slow deterioration, suddenly became overzealous about safety hazard and made the prospect of concluding our search for the Nazi cargo even more complicated.

The forced break offered us an opportunity to explore wooded hills surrounding the village. During WWII they became a site of strange mystical rites by members of SS . During one such outing, we came across a two meter large swastika sculpted into a rock. A large man-made clearing in front of it, was shaped in a semi-circle allowing the Nazis to perform rituals of the ancient Aryan god-men who were above any morality and therefore justified in their cruel deeds.

On June 17th 2005, I received an unexpected call from a new owner of the Brenna rectory sold by the Litomerice diocese to raise money for the church restoration. During an inspection of the two-story building, the owner noticed a patched up wall section in the ground floor hallway. Since it appeared like a sealed entry into a basement he invited me to examine it. A few hours after my arrival to Brenna, we managed to jackhammer a hole through a thin partition and crawled into an enclosed space, separated from the rest of the basement.

Sitting on the floor were five inconspicuously looking greyish paper boxes, each tied up with a piece of rope. Printed and handwritten documents inside revealed that we stumbled over the NSDAP’s (Hitler’s outlawed Nazi Party) membership archive once belonging to the organization’s Sudetenland(Czechoslovakia’s border areas annexed by Hitler in 1938) branch. About eight hundred personal files, all surprisingly well preserved and intact, identified NSDAP members in the northern industrial city of Liberec which in 1938 became the Nazi Party’s Sudetenland headquarters. It was then headed by Hitler’s fanatical supporter Konrad Henlein who masterminded his 1938 annexation.

Each member file consisted of the following records: GENEALOGICAL TREE/AHNENTAFEL, CRIMINAL RECORDS/AUSZUG AUS DEM STRAFREGISTER, VOLUNTEER WORK FOR THE PARTY /TATIGKEITSLIFTE, BOOK OF CONDUCT/ BEGUTACHTUNGSBOGEN, FAMILY HISTORY/STAMMBUCH, OATH OF ALLIANCE TO HITLER/VERPFLICHTUNG and TWO PHOTOGRAPHS The NSDAP was the main political force in Nazi Germany from the fall of the Weimar Republic in 1933 until the end of World War II in 1945 when it was declared illegal and its leaders were arrested and convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials.

In March 1945, Liberec also became the command center for the "WERWOLF" organization, formed hastily in the vanning days of WWII to conduct a guerrilla- warfare in post-war Czechoslovakia. Its members were trained for a sabotage work behind enemy lines. They were recruited mainly from the NSDAP and the HITLERJUGEND (Hitler’s youth organization).

Apart from its historical significance, the discovery of the NSDAP archive in the Brenna rectory helped to authenticate the eye-witness account by the local priest about the Nazi concealment operation there in March 1945. Furthermore, it promises to lead to further discoveries once the entry way both into the church underground and into the rectory cellars are cleared.

37 Sudetenland Castles November 5-12, 2005 & August 15, 2006; Èeská Lípa, Nový Berštejn, Houska

Patricia K. Grimsted, the preeminent American expert on Soviet and post-Soviet archives and a specialist on displaced cultural treasures from WW2, had organized jointly with the TV producer Jaro Sveceny a week-Iong fact-finding expedition to four castles in the former Sudetenland (then the annexed part of the Reich.) P.K. Grimsted became one of the first foreign historians to be admitted inside the walls of otherwise unpenetrable Moscow archives, where she discovered Russian and German documents testifying about a special significance, these obscure castles played at the end of WWII. Ever since the British bombing of Berlin had intensified in mid-1943, the castles of Mimon, Houska, Novy Bernstejn and Novy Falkenburk, assigned the code names Burgund I.- IV., were used by the Nazis to hide important and valuable book collections and archives. Although we have no reliable estimate of the total number of books transferred there and to Teresienstadt from Berlin, their total may have reached over half a million volumes. The code name Burgund came from the SS ambition to turn the French Burgundy into a federal state, part of the German empire. Considered by the Nazis to be a home of science and art before becoming merely a wine producing province, the newly raised Burgundy would also provide Germany with a strategic access to Mediterranean. It was assumed that LØon Degrelle, the leader of the Belgian Rexisten, would be Burgundy’s first leader and the official language would eventually become German. In their aspirations, the SS was copying the Jesuists 17. century attempt to create among Paraguay’s native Americans an independent state, which would escaped terrestrial sovereignty.

Nested comfortably in the territory fully controlled by the Germans, the spacious castles offered not only enough space for the large book collections and archives but also offered enough privacy to allow the Nazis to engage in their spiritual, scientific and intelligence activities.

1) Schloss Niemes (Czech Mimon), August 15, 2006 Located east of Ceska L pa - it was demolished in 1986 due to its structural demage. The Nazi code name was Burgund I. In addition to Judaica, notes of some shipments of occult literature from the RSHA Amt VII - Library headquarters, with active cataloguing in progress. In December 1944 SSObersturmbannfuhrer Engelmann was in charge of the operation. A title catalogue covering close to forty categories of occult subjects in the Niemes library was recently found by Patricia Grimsted in the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. Similar lists for Judaica and Hebraica have not yet been found, but a report of at least one large shipment of Judaica from Cracow in November 1944 was traced down.

Many of important Judaica collections reached Niemes, since several Western specialists who visited the place after WWII wrote a detailed reports. These included Jewish Community archives from Amsterdam, and at least the thirty-seven Hebrew manuscripts and six incunabular of the Saraval Collection from the Breslau Rabbinical Seminary as well as additional books from Breslau, the Jewish Community in Vienna, and other cities in Germany; newspapers from YIVO. Reportedly a railroad wagon of books was returned to Poland after WWII. 2) Schloss Hauska (Czech Houska) Located about 30 km southeast of Ceska Lipa. The code name Burgund II. Now privately owned by the great-grandson of Skoda Works’ former President, Senator Josef Simonek who bought it in 1924. The castle features a famous gothic chapel embellished with elaborate frescos. Sometimes also called "A Gate to Hell," the castle gained this reputation due to a deep gap situated right under the chapel’s floor. According to a legend, half-human, half-animal creators used to crawl through the crack harming people, cattle and the crop. Reportedly primarily used for library storage; in addition to Judaica, notes of some shipments of occult literature were also discovered.

3) Schloss Neu-Purstein (Czech NovĂ˝ BerĹĄtejn) 17 km south of Ceska Lipa (privately owned since 1990 by M. Slezak). The Nazi code name Burgund III. During WWII the castle was owned by the German Baron Ludolf von Wedel-Parlow.

In the fall of 1943, with the arrival of a large production crew from the Berlin-Film GmbH, the castle woke up briefly from its war-time lethargy. Until spring 1944 it had become a site of the production of a major feature film (a comedy of errors) directed by a well-known Nazi propaganda director Johannes Meyer. The film with an ambiguous title "Die heimlichen Br ute" ( The Secret Bride ) featured a star studied acting team lead by Magda Schneider, Hubert Bohme, Rudolf Prack and Gustl Stark-Gstettenbaur. Paradoxically, the film had never been shown publicly due to the censorship verdict that nothing, either in word or picture, should be carried about the Prague film "Die heimlichen Br ute," as alterations are being made.

While the military situation on the war front was further deteoriating and the D-day brought the Allies to the shores of France and to the gates of Rome, 85 crates of occult materials and occult religious studies of ancient Egypt arrived to Novy Bernstejn together with several major Jewish collections.

Little had been known about the war and post-war history of the area liberated by the units of Soviet Red Army until P.K. Grimsted s recent discoveries in the Moscow archives.

In 1945 the castle was confiscated as a German owned property by the Czech government and turned into a regional health facility before becoming a boarding school.

Schloss Neu-Purstein / Nový Berštejn

Schloss Hauska / Houska

Schloss Niemes / Mimon

38 Nazi Occult Workshop August 15, 2006

After a recent restoration, the castle New Falkenburk (27 km northeast of Ceska Lipa) returned to its pre - WWII glory. Now the state property, it had been turned into a home for displaced children some years back. Fresco painting of the Roman goddess of flowers, spring and fertility Flora covers the large ceiling and dominates the ground floor dinning room. The festival, named after her Floralia , used to be held in April or early May and symbolized the renewal of the cycle of life. It was celebrated with dancing, drinking, and flowers. On the first floor, the large hall of mirrors is embellished with yet another fresco painting, that of Aurora, the Roman goddess of dawn.

Unbeknown to the Czech historians, the Nazis assigned the castle in 1944 a code name Burgund IV. and placed there a special top-secret occult unit headed by SS Sturmbannfuehrer Hans Richter.

A highly selective library on astrology, theosophy and various even more esoteric occult subjects was gathered there. Richter s superior was the SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Werner Goetsch, one of Kaltenbrunner’s special confidants, who had a leading position in Amt VII (Foreign Intelligence). Goetsch became an internationally known figure when in 1935 lead a Nazi commando to Czechoslovakia to assassinate Karl Erich Rolf Formis, who had been broadcasting from a place near Prague anti-Hitler propaganda. .

A German memorandum discovered recently by the American researcher Patricia K. Grimsted in Moscow , summarizes January 25, 1944 meeting between Richter and Goetsch. Point 1. states that a close cooperation between the two officers in the process of manufacturing a secret occultedscientific raw material in the castle was planned. Point 2. notes Richter s demand to get a catalogue of the Hamburg free masons library.on loan. Point 3. SS commander Dr. Dittel promises to furnish Richter with the missing rituals n. 19-22. Point 4. Another Richter s demand to get a book

by Dr. Just Bayer on Spann. Point 5. Construction of a theology-like department for Gotsch s handset that should include all volumes of Herder s book Religion and Science. Point 6. Another demand to furnish Richter with Theodor Reos magazine Ori-Flamme available from the free masons library at Schlesiersee. SS commander Burmester in cooperation with SS Ehlers will carry out the order. Point 7. Separate procurement of the work by Charezza-Praxis. Point 8. Publication of Professor Heinrich’s work about the Christian corporative state. Sturmbannfuehrer Hans Richter undertook full responsibility for all of the materials and promised to protect it against increasing terrorist attacks. At the end of the meeting Richter was informed that all requested materials were already secured and prepared for a pick-up.

While occulted science was understood by the Nazis as being contained in various artifacts: ancient mysteries, various esoteric or other "occult traditions" and actual physical structures or other types of physical artifacts, the "science" component of this term focused specifically on three general areas: physics, chemistry, and biology. The occulted aspect of the term "occulted science therefore takes on an extension of meaning beyond what one normally associates with the term "occult". This "occulted science" is occulted in the sense of "hidden" or "dark" and therefore hidden in the sense of black and covert secret classified projects; "esoteric or occult traditions and secret societies" in the conventional sense.

This peculiar blend of logic, reason, and science with the metaphysical and speculative component is a paradigm that is readily adaptable to the peculiarly German turn of mind as it developed from the opening of the nineteenth century to the fall of the final bomb before the capitulation in 1945.

The answer may come from its possible connection to the SS’s special "occult research" department, the Ahnenerbedienst, the society personally established by Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler to investigate all manner of occult and esoteric doctrines for its possible scientific value and weaponization.

When Hitler’s private library was discovered in a mine near his idyllic Berchtesgaden, several tons of occult literature were contained in it, including a collection of (Lanz) Von Liebenfels. It was Von Liebenfels and his Order of the New Templars that formed the connection between the SS, irrational "Hollow Earth" experiments, and the far more successful atom bomb test at Rugen. With the assistance of wealthy patrons who soon flocked to his secret society - a society dedicated to basically anyone not "Germanic" or "Aryan" and to the "purification" of the German race from its corrupting influences (Jews, Slavs, "Mongoloids") Von Liebenfels was able to purchase and renovate several old castles throughout Austria and Germany and to transform them into centers for his Order. The Order, in addition to its racist ideology, also dabbled in "astrology, the Cabala, phrenology, homeopathy, and nutrition."

When the Nazis seized the power in Germany, they severely regulated any public display of "occultism" or "secret society" activity. Hence, Himmler’s motivations for creating the SS Ahnenerbedienst within the bureaucracy of the SS becomes clearer, for the regime was in part fearful of its own connection to the highest level to such societies and activities. By placing such activities under SS jurisdiction, they could be monitored, studied, funded, organized, and exploited in complete secrecy. The one might have some idea of what the Ahnenerbe was, and of the type of people it first attracted to its ranks. It was a humanities program. With guns.

The bureau devoted so much manpower and money to "esoteric research projects that it began to seem as if Himmler hoped to turn the tide in Germany’s favor by fathoming the secrets of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, the occult meaning of Gothic spheres. Among its most ambitious projects, enormous amounts of money were spent for a flight to Tibet to look for traces of a pure Germanic race which might have been able to keep intact the ancient Nordic mysteries. The Ahnenerbe also had archeologists digging up all of Europe for remains of Germanic culture. More than fifty departments in this branch succeeded in spending over a million marks ($400,000) on such "vital" matters. All intellectual, natural, and supernatural sources of power -from modern technology to mediaeval black magic, and from the teachings of Pythagoras to the Faustian pentagram incantation - were to be exploited in the interests of final victory." The Ahnenerbe’s portfolio was to investigate any potential source of power for weaponization. And notably, all normal constraints or orthodox conceptual or moral paradigm were laid aside.

The Nazis, in their desperation to win the war, had been experimenting with a form of science the rest of the world had never even remotely considered. And that somewhere in this cauldron of ideas, a new technology had been born; one that was so far ahead of its time it had been suppressed for more than half a century."This is the fact that at its very pinnacle, the SS was deliberately conceived and organized by Heinrich Himmler to be an occult "order," a black and twisted version of King Arthur’s Knights of the Holy Grail and Round Table.

The headquarters for this cult was situated at the medieval castle of Wewelsburg, near the towns of Paderborn and Detmold in the German province of Westphalia, close by the site in the Teutoburg Forest where Arminius made his stand with its famous, Stonehenge-like monument known as Externsteine....

There Himmler had constructed a central chamber with a large table designed to seat twelve men specially selected from the senior Gruppenfuhrers (generals) of the SS. A 12,000 volume library of the occult was available in the castle. Central to the secret initiation that these senior SS generals received was the real significance of the anagram "SS" itself. For the "rank and file elite" of the SS, the initials stood for the German word Schutzstaffel, a term meaning loosely a special staff or military unit. But to the initiates, there was another meaning of "SS" altogether, a meaning with roots deep in the occult and in ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, and to a certain extent, Egyptian belief. For these initiates, the letters "SS" referred to die Schwartze Sonne, the Black Sun. The connection between the SS and Egypt is further evidenced by the case of one of the most famous

esotericists of all: R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz.

For the SS Ahnenerbe, all this was a potent mix when one recalls that Himmler’s stated purpose for it, reveled in a letter he wrote to an Ahnenerbe scientist, was not only to study ancient religion, science, and the occult, but also that its principal establishment was as "an institute for military scientific research."

It goes without saying that the Black Sun symbolism formed a central doctrine to the pre-Nazi secret society, the Thule Society. The symbol of the Black Sun was also adopted as an emblem for Von Liebenfels’ New Templars. The swastika itself, in this context, becomes not only a well-known symbol from ancient esoteric traditions, but also a talisman of ceremonial magic on a celestial scale, deliberately chosen to mirror the apparent rotation of a well-known constellation around the north pole of the earth’s axis of rotation.

By war’s end and his control of all secret weapons projects in Nazi Germany, Hans Kammler had attained the rank of SS Obergruppenfuhrer, the equivalent rank of a four-star general, and only one rank below that of Himmler himself. Given this high rank, it is thus not only possible but very probably that Kammler was one of the chosen "Knights" of Himmler’s "round table", and thus it is probable that by the war’s and Kammler had a deeply connected relationship to the Ahnenerbe and its ocult activities. It may be in part for this reason that his dossier in the US government’s archives remains classified to this day. In any case, there is yet another odd fact, one that again potentially connects Kammler with the Ahnenerbe.

Heinrich Himmler, who viewed himself as having some sort of "psychic connection" with the famous mediaeval German Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich the Fowler, had the Emperor’s remains dug up and reinterred in the cathedral of the little town of Quedlinburg. Quedlinburg is in the Harz Mountains, in the heart of the region that was the center of Kammler’s empire of underground secret weapons plants and laboratories. The Ahnenerbe would mount an expedition to Tibet, and return with the only complete copy of the multi-volumed Buddhist Kang Shur to reach the West, a collection reputedly containing much lost information from the pre-classical, ancient "atlantean" world. The quest of the SS to investigate the scientific basis of occult notions, no matter how bizarre or flawed those notions were, is thus itself an integral component of Nazi ideology and is philosophical background in German romanticism and orientalism It is Adolf Hitler’s personal "will to power that betrays the interest of a potential occultist" so much so that this factor - so prevalent within the occult itself - "has never been given its proper due especially in connection to secret weapons research and the Kammler Group’s "think tank."

The wooded hills in the area became apparently a site of strange mythical rites by the SS members. At the time of our discovery of the NSDAP s archive in Brenna gothic church, we came across a two-meter-large swastika sculpted into a big rock. A large man-made clearing in front of it, was shaped in a semi-circle allowing the Nazis to perform rituals of the ancient Aryan god-men who were above any morality and therefore justified in their cruel deeds.

A Red Army officer operating with his unit in the New Falkenburk area in May 1945, described the deserted castle filled with books on alchemy, the occult, chemistry and natural history. He saw stones with runes carved on them and a lot of free masonry artifacts, old robes, chalices and mystical symbols. The Bundesarchive in Berlin has about 350-pages-long list of book titles once brought to New Falkenburk.

Further search by Patricia K. Grimsted in Moscow later this year willl hopefully produce also a missing personal diary of the New Falkenburk s SS unit chief Hans Richter that may tell us more about the role the castle really played in the Hitler s scheme of things.

Schloss Neufalkenburg / NovĂ˝ Falkenburk

Schloss Neufalkenburg / NovĂ˝ Falkenburk

39 French Intelligence Archive November 5-12, 2005; HornĂ­ Libchava

5 km northwest of Ceska Lipa, code name Biber. Starting in May 1943, the Amt IV D 4 French information unit was evacuated to the Sudetenland. It was housed in a castle in the village of Oberliebich, not far from four other castles the RSHA used for Amt VII library evacuation sites.

Before 1938 the castle was owned by the Order of Malta, who unsuccessfully tried to claim it after the war. After 1955 it was taken over by the Czech military authorities and used as a warehouse for medical supplies until 2002, when the title was transferred to the village of Horni Libchava. Today the crumbling main three-story building with an adjacent shed and tower are all that remains of what had been a more elegant Renaissance castle. An adjacent airstrip several hundred meters up the road from the castle was used by the German military during the war.

Today it is overgrown, but at the time of our November 2005 visit, a Cessna plane with German registration was parked alongside, having made an emergency landing. Earlier in 2005 a tunnel was discovered leading from the main building to a hidden entryway in the woods near the edge of the airstrip; professional examination by ordinance control specialists will be needed before plans for further excavation can proceed. Obviously, the Oberleibich castle had been a high-priority NS intelligence unit, so it is not surprising that it was camoflauged from the local population.

The massive card files from the French Surete Nationale and related French records held by Amt IVD in Berlin were all reassembled in the Oberliebich castle. The office also housed a photographic laboratory, as later reported by Soviet reconnaissance. An RSHA office list from December 1944 notes staff of at least eight, although their names have yet to be identified. No telephone number or street address are given in contrast to other Amt IV listings. By July 1944 the special Abwehr unit under Amt IV D4 was well enough organized in Oberliebich to announce the availability of data from their Surete card files to other RSHA offices through a postal box in Bohmisch-Leipa. Their announcement explained that direct telephone and telegraph inquiry lines were not available, although a Bohmisch-Leipa telephone number was provided.

As the Amt IV internal memorandum explained, the card file covered various categories of Frenchmen, including those active in political circles, those who had cooperated with the Secret in France, as well as all Soviet citizens visiting in France before June 1940. Police, and those who were working in the Reich. It also covered foreigners in France, along with German emigrants, especially those who had been politically active before June 1940. Of special interest to Soviet authorities, the 1944 announcement repeated that they had reorganized the card files of the foreign section prepared for the French Foreign Office, which covered Russian emigres The memorandum promised that additional documentary records of the Surete would soon be available, with information on political parties, trade unions, clubs, associations, newspapers, including files on politically active persons and organizations. Such documents would confirm that the extensive French trade-union records and some other French fonds later identified in Moscow were held by Amt IV in Oberliebich, rather than by Amt VII in Wolfelsdorf, although those records were not mentioned in Soviet reconnaissance reports regarding the materials seized from Bohmishe-Leipa (Ceska Lipa).

Towards the end of the war, the RSHA Amt IV unit in Oberliebich was apparently cooperating with a military intelligence unit, since Soviet authorities also found extensive records of the Information Bureau of French military intelligence (Deuxime Bureau) there. Soviet reports identify the German unit to which some of the remaining crates were addressed in Berlin (1940) as the RSHA, but Soviet archivists found no German inventories or office documentation. Apparently the Germans managed to destroy their own operational records before capture, and Soviet reports mention finding burned debris. Fortunately the foreign records held there were preserved. No Soviet reports have surfaced regarding the capture of German staff.

A Red Army SMERSH unit with the First Ukrainian Front found the major cache of French intelligence records in Oberliebich in early May 1945. On personal orders from Lavrentii Beria, Soviet group of 40-50 soldiers was sent to assist in assembling, packing, and loading an estimated 1,000 crates for transport to Moscow. Delays ensued because all the necessary orders had not been received. Archival Administration (GAU NKVD) Chief Nikitinskii (20 May 1945), ordered a special toplevel Soviet archival crew to Dresden by air, and their escort for them to Ceska Lipa, together with a received when GAU Acquisitions Department chief E.!. Golubtsov and his group arrived in Dresden 18 May, but Moscow’s speedy authorization of 15-20,000 German marks for expenses undoubtedly helped. Six weeks later, an armed convoy of twenty-eight sealed freight cars and a passenger wagon left Ceska Lipa on 6 July under armed escort. Attacked by bandits before they reached the German border en route to Dresden, they were further delayed there. The echelon encountered more sabotage before they reached Wroclaw (Breslau), and then, due to bad rails, they were diverted to Poznan.

Despite further attacks and delays, the secret cargo of French archives safely reached Moscow by mid-July.

As reported to Beria after arrival, the shipment included records of the French internal intelligence and counterintelligence services, with approximately 300,000 files and over a million cards covering documents from the Surete Nationale. The Central Card Files include all foreigners registered with the Surete, including persons belonging to the revolutionary movement in France and other countries classified according to their party membership. Among the card catalogue of over a million cards, the Soviet report specifically notes, they "found cards on Communist Party leaders and Soviet Government Comrades Stalin, Molotov, Kalinin, and Kaganovich."

Apart from French security materials in the archive are found a significant quantity of documents from the information bureau, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, War Ministry [Deuxieme Bureau - intelligence], trade unions, and political parties." Files (1921-1940) include "reports on developments in various countries from China, Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and others; on the Spanish "uprising (Civil War)", and the economy of Ukraine Materials from the French Foreign Ministry principally contain correspondence regarding the Saarland, the French consulate in Saarbrucken ... and on Tunisia and other French colonies in Africa." Many of the remaining "crates had German notations about the character of the contents" and specified that the materials were "needed by the RSHA in Berlin in AugustSeptember 1940." Some crates were marked as containing "Material having state political significance." Moscow specialists also found evidence that many of the French files found in Oberliebich had initially been worked over in Berlin.

Between January and May 1994, a significant number of French archives that had been kept in the Moscow Center for Safekeeping of Historical and Documentary Collections was returned to France. However, in May 1994 the process of reconciliation was interrupted by a sudden Russian Duma s decision to consider spoils of war a part of the national cultural heritage and to protect them.

Finally, on October 28, 1999 a new agreement had been reached between the former WWII allies and the transfer was resumed. By March of 2000, most of them were returned to France. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made them accessible to the general public in Paris and Nantes, encouraging the scholars to use them to fill in the blanks in the national history.

Schloss Oberliebich / HornĂ­ Libchava

As years went by, strategic, intelligence and propaganda value of the French archives held captive in the Soviet Union has slowly diminished. Information once used by the Soviet Union diplomacy during the years of cold war as a tool of political blackmail, had already lost its impact and importance twenty years later.

40 CHANCELLOR'S DESCENDENT (Plasy, CR, 2006-7)

Among a few who dared to oppose Hitler’s systematic plunder of European art treasures during WWII, the name of Count Franz Wolff Metternich (1893-1978), stands out prominently. The grandson of the famous Austrian Chancellor Klemens Wenzel von Metternich (1773-1859) who restructured Europe after Napoleon’s defeat was chosen to head Hitler’s "Art and Monuments Protection Office" when it was established in May 1940. At the time of his appointment Metternich enjoyed international reputation as a distinguished art historian and a Francophile. His organization also known as "Kunstschutz," became responsible for compiling a list of the most significant objects of art located in the war zone and protecting it in the name of the army and in conformity with international agreements.

As a civilian, Metternich was responsible for his work to the Supreme Command of the German Army. The protection of monuments and works of art was included in Wehrmacht directives, drafted in accordance with the 1907 "Hague Convention." (Art. 56: "The property of municipalities, that of institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, even when State property, shall be treated as private property. All seizure of, destruction or wilful damage done to institutions of this character, historic monuments, works of art and science, is forbidden, and should be made the subject of legal proceedings.")

Metternich felt that it was his duty to enforce this international law to the letter. For almost two years he had succeeded in preventing removal of art objects from the countries occupied by Germany.

However, his observation of international treaties did not go well with General Goring’s megalomaniac art-collecting taste. On 5 February 1941 Goering gave orders that the art objects which the Fuehrer wishes to acquire and those objects of art which are to become the property of the Reich Marshal are to be brought to Germany immediately. Wolff Metternich’s strong objections caused his immediate dismissal and in 1942 he returned to his quiet post of a Provincial Curator in Westphalia. However, following WWII, he continued his positive role and lead the Allies to more than ten major Nazi hideouts of the looted art in Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Hoping to learn more about Wolff Metternich, his family, education and the spirit he was brought up in, I had visited in 2006 Metternich’s family former estates in Kromeriz and Plasy where young aristocrat had spent extended period of time in the late twenties. The property owner, Wolff’s uncle Count Clemens Wenzel Metternich-Winneburg (1869-1930) was then married to Isabel de Silva y Carvajal, a cousin of the Spanish king. The couple usually spent winters in cosmopolitan Vienna, and used the castle in Kromeriz and Plasy primarily as their summer dwelling.

The rich family tradition and the atmosphere created there by its founder, the Chancellor is felt everywhere. The Kynzvart castle built in the Viennese classicist style features a priceless art collection acquired by the art-loving Metternich during his lifetime. Paintings by Anthony Van Dyck, Pieter Brueghel and Paolo Veronese are adorned by the Tizian’s most famous masterpiece - "Apollo and Mars."

Splendid interiors of Kynzvart Castle also house four late Gothic altar-pieces, created by the German painter Bernard Strigel (1461 - 1528) in 1510, indisputably ranking among the most precious exhibits. Strigel’s paramount panels depict the legend of finding the remains of the Holly Cross. They may have originated from the monastery at Ochsenhausen which was taken over by the Chancellor’s father, Prince Francis George of Metternich in 1803. The collections also include a French Renaissance tapestry with a hunting scene dating back to 1560, and several Renaissance and early Baroque portraits. Initially, many items used to adorn Chancellor Metternich’s villa in Vienna. Some marble sculptures (e. g. "Cupid and Psyche") originated in Antonio Canova’s workshop in Rome, reliefs were made by Bertel Thorwaldsen, while some other sculptures and busts were created by Christian Rauch, Pietro Fontana, Pompeo Marchese, Giuseppe Pisani and Pietro Tenerani. In total, this unique set consists of 36 marble Classical sculptures. In 1908 these works of

art were transferred to Kynzvart (including the French Imperial Style decorative vases and plinth made of malachite, porfyrite, alabaster and marble).

In 1828 Metternich chose the St. Wenzel church in Plasy to as a place to build his family tomb in.

Twenty-three embalmed corpses had been already resting there at the time of Wolff’s visits. Soon afterwards in 1930, the coffin with the remains of his uncle Clemens Wenzel was also added, making him the last of the family to be buried in Plasy.

WWII effectively ended the three hundred and fifteen years-long Metternichs presence in Bohemia.

At the end of the war, the last of the kin - Paul Alfons and his aristocratic Russian wife Tatyana Wasillichkov had to escape from Plasy overnight to avoid a capture by the quickly advancing Soviet Red Army. Leaving all their family possession behind, they settled down at the Johannisburg castle on the banks of Main River in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. With Paul Alfons’ death in 1992, the Winneburg branch of the Metternich’s family officially died off.

Their properties in Czechoslovakia were long before nationalized by the Czechoslovakian government as a result of the controversial President Benes’ post-WWII decree about evacuation of almost 3 mil. German nationals and a confiscation of their property. A renovation of the castle was finished in 2000 turning Kynzvart into one of the most valued Czech architectural landmarks. Its art collection has always been considered as one of the most valuable in Central Europe. In 2002, the castle and its gardens were placed by the UNESCO on the "World Heritage List."

While I was able to piece together many facts about many other members of Metternich family, my search for Wolff Metternich himself seemed to be going nowhere. Neither the Prague family archive nor the German Bundesarchiv revealed any interesting details on his young years and visits to Czechoslovakia. Then in summer of 2006 my numerous appeals for witnesses and information were suddenly answered by a middle-aged man whose familiarity with the Metternichs’ clan was surprising. His information gave eventually my investigation a new direction.

As Mr. K. explained, his great grandmother Mrs. Emilie Nova had worked for the Metternichs as a chambermaid both in Vienna and in Kynzvart and Plasy in1900-1920. In 1909 she gave birth to a boy whose father (as we can gather from several of her letters) was until then childless Count Clement Wenzel. Although the boy’s birth certificate does not mention his father’s name, Eduard had been brought up by the Metternchs as their own; eight years later together with the Count’s first official son Paul Alfons (1917-1992). When Clemens-Wenzel Metternich died on May 15 1930 in Munich, Paul Alfons at the age of thirteen became the sole heir to the family fortune.

I failed to find anything more about the fate of Mrs. Emilie Nova. Her son Eduard Novy died in 1981, he was cremated and buried in the Prague’s Olsany cemetery. Interestingly enough, neither Paul Alfons Metternich nor his Russian wife Tatyana Wasillitchkov (1915-2006) whom he married in 1942 in Grunewald, Germany never mentioned Eduard or his mother in their memoirs. Very little is also known about Paul’s father Count Clemens-Wenzel who apparently died of syphilis. Although most of the documents at my disposal seem to support my informer’s claim to be a continuator of the Metternich’s family, it became apparent that the only concisive proof about it could be gained through a DNA test.

During the past several years, a series of successful anthropological and medical experiments have been carried out in Czech Republic. By using discovered physical remains, a group of scientists lead by a world-renown anthropologist and doctor Emanuel Vlcek (1925-2006) succeeded in identifying several important figures in the Czech history, determined their age, likeness and unique features, established cause of death, etc. Among them the kings Charles IV. (1316-1378) and Ladislav Pohrobek (1440-1457), the warlord Jan Zizka of Trocnov (1360-1424) and the military leader Albrecht of Valdstein (1583-1634.) In none of these cases though did Prof. Vlcek use the DNA test - a legacy he left to the next generation of scientists.

The recent discoveries made the City Council in Plasy (Metternichs’ tomb administrator) willing to discuss and eventually even grant me an approval to exhume the corpse of Clemens Wenzel Metternich and to collect his DNA sample. It was going to be matched against the one that my medical team had already gotten from Mr. K. To give our undertaking the best expertise possible, I have contacted several international DNA institutes and discussed with them thoroughly the entire process of the test. American, Swiss, British and Swedish doctors shared their own experiences and although somewhat skeptical about the viability of the DNA samples we might collect from the corpse, they agreed to cooperate. The main problem though was that the all-masculine link between Clemens Wenzel and Mr. K. was interrupted at one point by a female relative, making the Y-chromosome testing impossible to apply.

On February 19, 2007, I found myself standing in front of the door leading to the Metternichs’ crypt at Plasy St. Wenzel’s church. A Latin "PAX VOBIS" ("Let There be Peace with You") sign painted in gold letters spanned over the small entrance. My team consisted of two doctors - Czech DNA specialists, the city Mayor and a cameraman. Employees of the local Funeral Home had already pulled out the wooden coffin of Clemens Wenzel from its iron rack located in the middle row on the left side of the crypt and opened it up.

They found one more zinc plate casket inside containing the aristocrat’s physical remains. It had a small 25x15 cm glass window at the upper part, allowing a glimpse at the Count’s disintegrating face. Since to open the casket completely and expose the entire corpse would have meant to virtually cut it in half, the doctors opted to work through the small opening. Approximately one hour later, carefully carrying several plastic begs containing the precious DNA samples and relieved that the most demanding task of this project was over, we left the crypt.

The samples were immediately delivered to the Prague Gennet Lab, the most advanced specialized workplace in Czech Republic. Meantime, the lab has managed to gather several other DNA samples from Mr. K.’s deceased relatives that turned out viable and were able to compensate for our inability to perform the Y-chromosome test. They included the post stamps lifted from the letters written by Mr. K.’s great grandmother around 1908, his grandfather’s two unfinished cigarettes in a silver case, etc. As of this writing in April 2007, the testing will continue for another couple weeks before the final results are known.

If the matching of Mr. K.’s and Count Clemens Wenzel von Metternich’s DNA samples turns positive, it will almost certainly open a can of worms. The Czech government will not escape yet another test of its fragile relationship with neighboring Germany on the issue that nobody is anxious to discuss. Was the post-WWII Czech decision to confiscate legally owned German property justified and if so, why it involved those Germans who had clearly proved their anti-Nazi sentiments and risked their lives by fighting against Hitler?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Archives, doc. materials, personal testemonials

Grimsted Patricia K., Historian/ Author, Harvard University, Ukrainian Research Institute; Smejkal Ladislav, Historian, Ceska Lipa Museum; Bulajc Belko, Film Director: "The Donor"; Georgescu Mihai, Manager, Cosaco Group Ltd., Romania; Muzik Helmut, People's Militia, CSSR; Muzik Josef, Treasure Hunter; Gaensel Helmut, Mining Prospector; Lowery Colm, Microbiologist/Author; Carrington Nic, Volker Commission, London; Rydygr Zdenek, Historian, Military History Club, Ceska Lipa; Cichon Petr, Writer/Journalist, “Host do Domu”; Carrington Nic, Volker Commission, London; Kozlov Konstantin, Art Historian/Author; Dobisikova Jana Dr., Genetist, The National Museum, Prague; Kukla Pavel Dr., Dentist Production Support & Assistance

Cingovatov Jurij Lvovic, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia; Krejci Jan, Mayor, Vrchlabi; Katek Janet, US State Dept.; Cerovsky Milos, ex-Prosecutor General; Macek Jaroslav, Chancellor, Litomerice archdioceze; Kavan Richard, Matejka Jan, priests, Zakupy; Stehlikova Daniela, Art Historian, UMPRUM; Dvorsky Miroslav, ex-Director, Czech Criminal Police; Bek Eduard, Explorer; Petschek Viktor, Enterpreneur, NYC; Ford Arch, Treasure Hunter in Phillipines; Wimmer Roman, Political Lobbyist, “Mount Top”; Djakovic Pedjo, Painter; Marecek Vaclav, Attorney; US National Archives, College Park, Maryland; Vokac Petr, Author/Journalist; Koch Chris, Producer, Koch TV; Paturi Felix, Author, ZDF/Bertelsmann Publish.; Knodl Jindrich, Adv. Executive; Ebrahim Margaret, Producer, CBS News; deBonville Floris, Director, Gamma Photo; Shigenobu Yutaka, Producer, TV Man Union; Utley Garrick, Anchorman, Turner Broadcasting; SteenOlsen Peter, TV Producer; Ransom Scott, Director/Cameraman, ESPN; Packo Ludovit, Aircraft Designer, Larus; Robbart John, Investment Banker Technical & Logistical Support

Bohm Jindrich, Kovar Ivan, Subert Rastislav, Noha Zdenek, Technical Divers; Duchoslav Zdenek, Archeologist, “Zebra Earth Science”; Patterson Jeffrey, Geologist, The University of Calgary; Zegklitz Jaroslav, Archeologist; Institut of Archeology CR; Hanus Frantisek, Geologist, Prague City Hall; Hajek Jiri, Spokesman, Ministry of Interior; Robbart John, Investment Banker, NYC; Hajducikova Dagmar, Ministry of Culture, CR; Slezak Miro, Castle Novy Berstejn, Owner Camera/Photography

Becker Alan, Photographer, World Photo Bank; Tuma Frantisek, Cameraman; Lutansky Stepan, Photographer, Tichy Zdenek, Cameraman; Obzinova Jitka, Photographer; Kotesovec Radim, Video Editor, Noha Zdenek, Technical Diver; Straka Oldrich, Cameraman; Sembera Jan, Photographer Bibliography

"Das Reich" by John Lucas; "Hitler und die Bombe" by Thomas Mehner; "The Vengenance Express"

by Colm Lowery; "The Hunt for Zero Point" by Nick Cook; "Death is Learning to Fly" by Vilem Nejtek; "Stolen Painting," by Vladimir Hottman; The Rape of Europa by Lynn H. Nicholas; Returned from Russia by Patricia K. Grimsted; The Apothecary by Adrian Mathews; Reich of the Black Sun by Joseph P. Farrell; Beautiful Loot by Konstantin Akinsha & Grigori Kozlov

Media Coverage

"Prague Post," Levy Alan; "Black Ice Magazine," Benett Mark; "Helsinki Times," Laukka Petri; "Thesau Magazine," Touge Pierre Allan; "Prognosis," Mabe H. Morgan; "Prague Pill," Jayne Micah; "Radio Metropolis," MichaelĂ­s Deborah; "National Geographic," Kobersteen J. Kent; "Rocks and Minerals," Marie Huizing; "Life Magazine," Howe Peter; "Frontline," Campbell Marrin; "Primetime Live," ABC News, Rosen Ira; "Tribune Entertainment," Cooper Shelly, "Reflex Magazine," Klima Josef; "NOVA-TV", Klima Josef; "CT-1"; "NHK-TV," Shigenobu Tutala; "Bayerischer Rundfunk," Kellhammer Angelika; "Newsweek," Krosnar Katka; "BBC Europe," Shukman David; "Koktejl Magazine," Slama Milan; "TIME Magazine Europe," Labi Aisha; "Suddeutsche Zeitung", Katzenberg Paul; "The Economist," Konviser I. Bruce; "ARD Donors

Landau Robert, Principal, ISP; Koch Chris, Director, Koch TV; Glasier Joshua, Developer; Sammy Tom, Real Estate Exec., Spectrum; Klapa Milan, Chief Ingeneer-Lipno Dam; Propaganda Agency; Duchoslav Zdenek, Archeologist; Bakker Frans, Financial Dir., Philipps; Rubens Ogan, Developer, Africa-Israel; Macek Otto, Art Director Technical Assistance

Andrle Ales, Hanus Lubor, Knodl Jindrich, Michalec Petr, Gorman Tim, Lemkin Peter

c 2006 Jaro Sveceny The material contained herein is protected by copyright laws of America. No portions or excerpts can be used without an explicit approval by the copyright holder.