Polish researchers obtain permission to search potential site of Amber Room missing since WWII

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

A team of researchers looking for the Amber Room – a lavishly decorated 18th-century chamber that disappeared after being looted by Nazi Germany in World War Two – have been granted permission to search for it at the site of a former SS training ground in Poland where they believe it may be buried.

The head of the initiative, Jan Delingowski, told broadcaster RMF that ground-penetrating radar surveys conducted by researchers from AGH University of Science and Technology “found a large anomaly”.

It was “so large and pronounced that they recommended we drill and try to find out what this anomaly is through an archaeological excavation”, he added. The conservator of monuments in Pomerania province in northern Poland has now granted permission for that work to go ahead.

The Amber Room is one of the most famous lost treasures of the Second World War. It was originally constructed in Prussia in the early 18th century before later being installed at the Catherine Palace near St Petersburg. The chamber gained its name from the six tonnes of precious amber that lined its walls.

In 1941, after Nazi Germany had invaded the Soviet Union, German soldiers dismantled the room and transported it to Königsberg (now known as Kaliningrad).

However, by the end of the war the chamber had disappeared, with its fate a mystery. Some believe it was destroyed in the Allied bombing of Königsberg. Others have suggested it was sunk at sea while being evacuated from the advancing Red Army.

But there have also been claims that the chamber was hidden away somewhere, or lost or abandoned while being evacuated, making it a popular target for treasure hunters such as Delingowski.

For the last decade, he has been searching in the historical region of Kashubia, located in what is now northern Poland, for a German depository of valuables, potentially including the Amber Room, that he believes was hidden in a bunker at an SS training ground.

It is that bunker that Delingowski believes may now have been located by the AGH scientists’ radar scans.

“There’s definitely something there, but is it the bunker we’re looking for? Nobody knows,” says Sławomir Porzucek, a geophysics professor from the university, quoted by Radio Zet. He warns that the anomaly could also turn out to just be a geological structure or buried debris.

Late last month, the provincial conservator of monuments confirmed that it had issued permission for drilling and an archaeological survey in the town of Dziemiany at the location of a potential World War Two bunker.

“According to the applicant, the search area may contain a German deposit from World War Two,” noted the conservator. The statement added a note of scepticism in its title – “The Amber Room, meaning it’s the middle of summer” – suggesting that this is just a summer “silly season” story.

However, the conservator did note that searches at the site of the former SS training ground in question – which was previously unmarked on any maps – have already uncovered an underground brick storage tank beneath a layer of debris from the postwar communist period.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.