Safe to say. After one generation, old codes to numbered Swiss Accounts, if the Family in question doesn't have *other* active accounts with said bank, are null and void and the deposited sums become property of the bank (in reality, if not in law).
Posted on 08/15/2005 11:02:53 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Alfred Egner drowned.
He was just a workhorse, really, a 19-year-old boy from Munich, hired by a couple of former SS officers in 1963 to dive down to the murky bottoms of Austria's Lake Toplitz and resurface with fistfuls of treasures secreted away in this alpine paradise.
It wasn't his first dive in Lake Toplitz, but he may have gotten tangled in some of the hundreds of logs that line the bottom, or something may have gone wrong with his equipment.
Regardless, he never retrieved what the two men were most likely looking for: secret codes to Swiss bank accounts, which had been sealed in waterproof tubes and dumped into the lake by Nazis at the end of the war.
The Nazis used Lake Toplitz as a vast, submerged cellar, warehousing millions of dollars' worth of stolen art, gold and jewels, among other things.
This exceptionally beautiful region of Austria, known as Steiermark, is in the heart of the alpine forest, and Hitler and his men thought it a perfect retreat from Allied soldiers, a place in which to hide out and regroup, free from enemy bombers. And also a great place to bury booty.
Egner was not the first to go looking for it. Others started diving for treasure just after the war ended, having seen military trucks dump in crate after crate of mysterious goodies for months and months. The Nazis eventually commissioned locals to do the deed, bringing the crates by oxcart, transports which occurred more and more frequently in the frantic last days of the war.
Two news organizations -- Germany's Stern magazine in the 1950s and CBS News in 2000 -- sent treasure hunters to delve the depths of Lake Toplitz.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Are they going to be bringing Geraldo Rivera? I think he needs a new crusade and being trapped at the bottom of a lake seems like a worthy end.
How fascinating!
Every few years, since 1945, there's a story about Nazi loot in the Alpine lakes. As far as I know, they've found nothing but counterfeit English money, some munitions, and some assorted trash. I would guess that the people in charge of the loot were smart enough to stash it somewhere they could recover it, not in some bottomless (for all intents and purposes) lake. The story of the Nazi gold train is more interesting, especially the part where all the gold disappears, and nobody knows who the convoy of "US soldiers" who drove off with it really were. Another Skorzeny job?
They'd better watch out. The Nazis buried all sorts of interesting things towards the end, including explosives and poison gas.
2. Why would anyone who plans on retrieving the treasure possibly notify the world? If it were me, I wouldn't tell anyone so that I would get to keep the loot.
It makes no sense that someone would hide "codes" at the bottom of a lake.
I wonder if they'll run across any Toplitz dancers?
I would suggest being trapped at the bottom of a lake inside Adolph Hilter's personal vault would really be appropriate...
My partner's father was a captured RAF pilot and he bought a farm in Poland after the war to try and find the treasure he and other prisoners dumped in a lake he remembered. Never found it. Got too old to dive.
E-mail buddy in East Germany is one of a group of tunnel searchers who are similarly looking for treasure. Their holy grail is the "Bernstein Zimmer" stolen from the Russians. The Amber Room. No one has found it, but one of the club members now lives in Costa Rica in luxury. Won't say where he got his money.
There's truth behind the stories.
I remember Hans Blix saying there was a possibility that Saddam buried the WMD underwater. He even said they were considering hiring divers. He mentioned a specific area but I forgot what he said.
I just read a a Helen McInnes novel about this. The novel is 40 years old. The rumor has been around since the end of The War.
Did it come with a map?
Yes, but it had been torn out of the book's lining.
Safe to say. After one generation, old codes to numbered Swiss Accounts, if the Family in question doesn't have *other* active accounts with said bank, are null and void and the deposited sums become property of the bank (in reality, if not in law).
Don Rickles and Telly Savalas at their best!
read later bump
none other than Jimmy Hoffa
Note: this topic is from 8/15/2005. Thanks nickcarraway.related: And a more recent treasure story:
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
