In the defense of Arnhem, a bank building was hit by a direct hit in August 1944. A safe was destroyed and the contents (jewellery, watches, coins, brilliants and diamonds) were thrown onto the street. The story goes that German soldiers picked up the valuables from the ground and eventually kept them in four ammunition boxes in the Betuwe, in the southwest of the province of Gelderland.
The Dutch authorities became aware of it through a tip from a German soldier, a certain Helmut. He said he saw how a group of soldiers buried the coffins near a poplar. Helmut is brought to the Netherlands in June 1947. At the soldier’s direction, a pit is dug near the poplar. But the treasure is not found.
That leads to speculation. Did Helmut make up the story? Unlikely, is the verdict of the Dutch criminal investigation department. Did employees of the Investigation Service, who knew about the tip, secretly run off with it? It wouldn’t be very strange. An inspector writes that this concerns a treasure of ‘many millions’.
The scenario is being investigated, according to the documents that were recently released, but there are also other options. They are also much more concrete. During a new excavation attempt, in August 1947, two American officers suddenly turn up at the search site. They also come to dig and therefore know about the alleged treasure. This causes great suspicion in the Netherlands. Certainly also because recent excavation traces are visible in two other places in the area.
And then there is a third scenario, perhaps the most imaginative. During his interrogations, Helmut mentions the name of a fellow German soldier, Edward K., who he believes was involved in burying the treasure. It is not entirely clear why, but Helmut suggests that K. may have returned for the valuables in the following days.
According to Helmut, K. was a deserter from the Czech army who defected to the Germans. The birth certificate that later emerges shows that his cradle was in Sudetenland, which was annexed by the Germans in 1938 and is now part of the Czech Republic. The file in the National Archives also contains a photo of K., possibly from the Allied troops stationed in Berlin at the time.
The Dutch criminal investigation department makes a number of attempts to find K., whose whereabouts are unknown. They are all without results, then it becomes quiet. That silence has now persisted for more than seventy years. The treasure of millions has never been found. There is also no trace of Edward K. or his surviving relatives.