Fantastical stories of Nazi money have for a long time ensnared the country, from hidden tunnels to abandoned castles. For MailOnline’s Ed Wight, it was like stepping into the pages of a real-life Boy’s Own adventure book, with exciting tales of intrigue, mayhem, and even murder.
He claims that the surprises along the road were worth more than their weight in gold, even though no gold was discovered anywhere during the eight years he spent reporting on every turn and curve.
I never thought of myself as an Indiana Jones type; rather, I saw myself as the masculine Bridget Jones.
However, I later ran with Mr. Boczek, a kind, ruddy-cheeked guy who was a member of a group of amateur detectorists known as The Silesian Research Group.
He also claimed to have “knowledge” on the Nazi gold train. We met at a coffee in the Polish town of Walbrzych, and as his tale developed, I started to sense a “cometh the man” moment.
His story, which apparently included locating the train two years earlier, included Nazis. Spy agencies. Adventure. True Indiana Jones material. He took me to a forest, and after a while of wriggling through brush, he stopped and pointed to a hilltop.
The train is there, he said decisively. Well, of course it wasn’t. It also wasn’t the scene I had in mind when I thought of Indiana Jones. This was an elevated area of ground amid a sparse clearing of trees, not a snake-infested jungle packed with boobytraps and spear-wielding warriors.
We had no idea, however, that when I snapped a picture and sat on a stump to write the tale, the tranquil village of Walbrzych would suddenly become the focus of a major media frenzy.
The following day, indeed, chaos broke out. Mr. Boczek fanned the flames by revealing he had more tricks in his sleeve, a bag of Nazi garb he claimed to have discovered beside the hilltop. These contained a few coins, buttons, and other trinkets decorated with Swastikas.
Not quite the holy grail, and not the tons of gold that spurred a quest for the two enigmatic individuals who claimed to have found it. However, a Dutch journalist informed me that his presence was motivated by something else. He said, “My editor loves this!”
Well done, he. Then I met Tadeusz Slowikowski, a vivacious 85-year-old. He said that he had spent half his life looking for the train and that a German he had spared from being beaten up had told him where it was in the 1950s.
Even a model train set with the engine within a tunnel was in his possession. He stated that once he started looking for the train, his dog was poisoned, his phone was tapped, and his front door was broken into while he walked me through his meticulous maps and studies.
He said that these were standard strategies used by the secret police to frighten individuals.
This more closely resembled the Indian Jones territory I was looking for. And when the local TV crew grabbed me for a response, I said as much. And the Today show on Radio 4.
The only things that were lacking were a Nazi-loving femme fatale and a hard-drinking love interest. Instead, a chubby middle-aged guy approached me and called Slowikowski’s findings “crap” while offering to sell me a “X marks the location” map for £300.
One more revealed to me that he had discovered a cache of stolen artwork as a young lad in a hidden cave. The Gold Train guys said they had “additional proof” and that there may be TWO trains, according to a friend who indicated he knew someone who had a covert tape of it.
It seemed like everyone in Walbrzych had a tale to tell. Additionally, it seemed like everyone knew someone who knew someone who knew a “secret.”
The location of the gold train was still a mystery, but the whereabouts of the two men who held the greatest secret of all remained a mystery. They turned out to be a local builder and a German genealogy who had made a deal with a local broadcaster and subsequently appeared on television.
The spot where they said the train was concealed was visited that day by a strange black vehicle that was being guarded by cops. A large cop approached while I was shooting covert pictures while squatting in the bushes. Get out of here, he commanded.
“The whole region has been fenced off.” Do not return; go right now. I didn’t return. What, however, was this van? Covert Service? One individual said that the answer was yes.
On my final evening, he was sitting in the hotel bar, sporting camouflage clothing and what seemed to be a false mustache. He introduced himself as “a friend of interest,” claimed he needed to hide his voice by squeezing his neck, and in a Stephen Hawking-like manner informed me that the train was loaded with chemical weapons and dead people.
He said that a “secret agreement had been established with the CIA” to safeguard the train’s wealth.
There, I concluded, was the end of my days as Indiana Jones. No trains, no guns, and for certainly no gold. The closest I could get was a local municipal T-shirt with a gold train on it.
including a book mention In a chapter titled “Where is Indiana Jones when you need him?,” a local historian wrote the text. “Ed Wight has a great English accent, nicely pressed clothes with blue stripes, and a pleasant disposition,” the introduction added.
Yay me. A few flurry of follow-up enthusiasm occurred in the years that followed. An Amber Room taken from St. Petersburg by the Nazis and kept in a covert bunker? Nope! a similar Amber Room on a submerged ship? Nope! Then a guy arrived with a journal. A NAZI journal! He continued by saying it gave the locations of 11 spots where WWII booty was hidden and claimed it had been authored by an SS officer.
The hour has come, I murmured. I would have snatched up a hat if I had one. Roman Furmaniak was the individual in question.
He had a 19th-century nobility about him and was tall and mysterious with bushy eyebrows. not much more, however. It took him a year to choose one of the potential places for the treasure’s burial before he settled on a former palace. And another year to declare the beginning of digging, which in reality was only a few guys using hand trowels to sift through the muck.
Meanwhile, rumors started to spread among the Gold Train gang members.
A astute WWII researcher and historian named “Lamps” said that she had also received the journal and that it was “total tosh.”
Another said that neither the SS officer’s name nor the identity of the lady he had given the money to, Inge, existed.
After the war, a German lady did stay in the region, but she wasn’t Inge, according to ‘Lamps’. After a further year went by, Furmaniak finally said that he had discovered a hidden canister.
But after the serious digging began, all his crew was able to unearth was a few coins from the Nazi period.
I briefly and warmly thought about Mr. Boczek and his hilltop.
The dig then ran out of money and launched a crowdsourcing campaign, but it was too late to stop the approaching missile at that point.
Large portions of the journal were found to have been taken verbatim from a book that was written years after the war by the historical organization Furmaniak had provided the diary to for study.
Furmaniak has not contacted me since, and I don’t anticipate that he will. But, and I mean but with a capital B, I firmly think Furmaniak believed the diary to be authentic.
And if he was tricked, who by and why is the next question? I’ll have my fictitious Indiana Jones helmet ready when I fall back into my Bridget Jones lifestyle and “perfectly pressed clothes with blue stripes.”
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