No Nazi loot is buried in the ground of a village in the eastern Netherlands, authorities said on Tuesday following a final search, as the release of a map sparked a treasure hunt.
The Dutch national archives had unveiled in early January a document indicating with a hand-drawn red cross the place where German soldiers would have hidden a treasure of an estimated value at the current equivalent of nearly eleven million euros, never found.
But the archaeologists who dug on Monday, after fruitless excavations already in 1947 and multiple searches by amateurs recently, found nothing but a wheel rim, an old tree and a rifle bullet.
“We assume that the treasure was once buried in Ommeren, but that it has already been dug up,” Birgit van Aken-Quint, spokesperson for the municipality of Buren, on which the peaceful village depends, told AFP. which was invaded by treasure hunters and fascinated beyond Dutch borders.
Local archaeologists had received permission to dig in two locations on Monday, on the grounds of a fruit company and next to the parking lot of a regional museum, she said.
But this last search was far from leading to the discovery of ammunition boxes filled with jewels, precious stones, gold coins and music boxes mentioned in the testimony of a German soldier published in the archive documents.
Had it been found, the treasure — believed to have been looted after the bombing of a bank in Arnhem in 1944 and buried after the Allied Market Garden offensive — should have been handed over to the state.
“But the rim, the old tree and the ball (…) were taken away by the archaeological office or handed over to the municipality,” added Ms Van Aken-Quint.
The municipality now hopes to close the chapter after the influx into the village of many people armed with metal detectors, which infuriated some residents and forced the authorities to intervene.
Fifteen people have received a warning since early January for trying to dig without permission on the ground, said Van Aken-Quint.
The ban remains in effect. If people try to find the treasure, we will enforce it,” she warned.