60 years later
THE SEARCH FOR NAZI TREASURES IV. 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. Almost two decades into his project, Sveceny carefully chooses a new story material, attempting to poise the strenght of the Holocaust survivors’ experience with the cases of still uncovered war loot. WWII archives both in the West and in the East have slowly began to reveal their secrets. Bits of eye-witness accounts and the German, Russian and American intelligence documents started to trickle out, keeping the TV producer’s hopes high that even his two main challenges will be resolved before he finishes this project. A puzzling disappearance of the Auschwitz gas chambers’ constructor and Hitler’s chief of “secret weapon” program General Hans Kammler in April 1945 and the mystery of the “Amber Room” final resting place. Both cases became his Grail and as the producer hopes, they will become his final pay-off for years of work on this historical saga.
IV. LIST OF CONTENTS
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 THE PROJECT HISTORY
36 NSDAP 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 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 ocuments 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 Léon 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 Lípa - 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 Nový Berštejn) 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 Bräute" (“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 Bräute," 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 Moscow. 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.
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 in 2007 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 Ukraine‌Materials 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.
Schloss Oberliebich / Horní 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. 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.
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 o f 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 can stand 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. a. b. c.
To finish up the 2007 production schedule To secure funding for the Project continuation To conclude production agreement with an international producers or broadcasters To produce TV programs based on "The Search for Nazi Treasures" project
Jaro Sveceny, Producer Spring 2007
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Archives, doc. materials, personal testemonials
Grimsted Patricia K., Historian/ Author, Harvard University, Ukrainian Research Institute; Smejkal Ladislav, Historian, Ceska Lipa Museum; Rydygr Zdenek, Historian, Military History Club, Ceska Lipa; Masek Oto Dr., Dpt. Castle Libraries, National Museum; Antonin Lubos, Historian, National Museum; Slezak Miro, Owner, Castle Novy Berstejn, Simonek Jan, Owner, Castle Houska; Akinsha Konstantin, Art Historian/Author, “ArtNews”; Lowery Colm, Microbiologist/Author, University of Cork; Cichon Petr, Writer/Journalist, “Host do Domu”; Dobisikova Jana Dr., Genetist, National Museum, Prague; Broucek Jan MUDr, Genetist, Institute of Criminology ; Marec Frantisek, Genetist, Charles University in C.B.; Kate Styer, Gen Tree DNA, Salt Lake City, Utah; Bennett Greenspan, President, Family Tree DNA, Houston, Texas; Joelle Apter, Gentest, Switzerland; Semikhodskii Andrei, Director, Medical Genomics Ltd, London, G.B.; Kukla Pavel Dr., Dentist; Dekanova Ivana, Sales Rep, IBM; Jizersky Jan, military pilot Production Support & Assistance
Hurt Miloslav, Mayor, Plasy, CR; Sebrankova Eva, City Hall Plasy; Bennett Mark, Journalist, “Black Ice Magazine,” Touge Pierre Alain, TV Producer, Paris; Wimmer Roman, Political Lobbyist; SteenOlsen Peter, TV Producer; Pitnerova Zdena, Educator, Home for Displaced Children, Novy Falkenburk; Novotna Irena, Historian Technical & Logistical Support
Hanus Frantisek, Geologist, Prague City Hall Camera/Photography
Straka Oldrich, Cameraman; Sembera Jan, Photographer, Hlavaty Pavel, Cameraman, Tichy Frantisek, Cameraman Bibliography
“Returned from Russia” by Patricia K. Grimsted; “The Rape of Europa” by Lynn H. Nicholas; “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 Alain; "Prognosis," Mabe H. Morgan; "Prague Pill," Jayne Micah; "Radio Metropolis," Michaelís 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-TV,” Pffeifer Fritz; “London Times” O’Neil Phillipe Donors
Landau Robert, Principal, ISP; Glazier Joshua, Developer, Chicago; Sammi Tom, Real Estate Exec., Spectrum, Prague; Duchoslav Zdenek, Archeologist; Bakker Frans, Financial Dir., Phillips Int., Boston; Rubens Ogan, Developer, Africa-Israel, Prague; Macek Otto, Art Director c 2007 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.