Amateur treasure hunters rushed to find "alleged" treasure which hid by German soliders during World War II. Armed with metal detectors and shovels, groups wandered through fields surrounding rural Ommeren in the east of the country after the map was made public by the Dutch National Archive on Tuesday.
The archive said the map is believed to hint where Nazi soldiers had hidden four large boxes filled with diamonds, rubies, gold, silver and other jewellery items which they had looted after an explosion at a bank in August 1944.
The map was obtained from a German soldier shortly after the war by the Dutch institute that was tasked with tracing German capital in the Netherlands after the country was freed from Nazi occupation in 1945.
The research file which held the map was released this week as the maximum period of 75 years during which it could be held confidential had lapsed.
Although the existence of the treasure could never be fully confirmed, the institute undertook various failed attempts to find it in 1947, said National Archive spokesperson, Anne-Marieke Samson, to Reuters. "We don't know for sure if the treasure existed. But the institute conducted a lot of checks and found the story reliable. But they never found it, the treasure might very well have been dug up already," she said.
But the slim chance of finding valuables did not deter amateur gold-diggers. "I see groups of people with metal detectors everywhere," said 57-year old Jan Henzen as he took a break from his own search. "Like a lot of people, the news about the treasure made me go look for myself. The chance of the treasure still being here after 70 years is very small I think, but I want to give it a try," he added.
Former Ommeren mayor Klaas Tammes, who now runs the foundation that owns the lands that might hide the treasure, said he had seen people from all over the country. "A map with a row of three trees and a red cross marking a spot where a treasure should be hidden sparks imagination. Anyone who finds anything will have to report it to us, so we'll see. But I wouldn't expect it to be easy," he said.
