Treasures stolen by the Nazis were rescued by simple miners Automatic translate

The recently published book by Konrad Kramar, an Austrian writer and journalist, sheds new light on what happened to the tremendous artistic treasures plundered by the Nazis for the potential “Fuhrer Museum” in the Austrian city of Linz. The cost of these treasures is estimated at 5 million euros.

Kramar reconstructed historical and documentary sources about the events that happened in the Altaussee salt mine in the last days of the Third Reich, before the arrival of the first American troops on May 9, 1945.

About 7,000 paintings of the best artists of all time were hidden here from the bombing. In March 1945, Hitler ordered the destruction of the entire mine infrastructure, including covert video surveillance , specifying that works of art should be transferred to the museum under construction. However, one of the Nazi leaders, the governor of Upper Austria, Augusto Eigruber (August Eigruber) was obsessed with the obsession that treasures could go to the Bolsheviks. Therefore, Eigruber decided to blow up the paintings along with the mine. The ordinary miners saved the masterpieces of art from destruction, the main purpose of which, however, was to preserve the salt mine itself, as the only source of their existence. After the miners failed to convince Eigruber not to blow up the mine, the workers decided to act on their own.

Despite the fact that there were approximately equal numbers of supporters and opponents of the Nazi regime among the miners, they came together and together sought support from Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the head of the Gestapo, who found shelter in this region at the end of the war. This area - the Nazis called it the "Alpine Fortress" - became a refuge for many leaders of the regime, and the allied forces entered it only after the surrender of Germany, fearing a guerrilla war of SS soldiers in the mountains.

The actions of the miners could cost them their lives, but Kaltenbrunner, a ruthless war criminal who was hanged, like Eigruber, after the Nuremberg trials, surprisingly decided to help the miners and allowed him not to blow up the mine. On May 3 and 4, a dozen miners pulled all the explosives out of the ground, and the SS soldiers guarding the mine were persuaded to surrender their weapons and remove the cordon.

And only after that the forces of the allies arrived in the region, who got the laurels of saviors of objects of art. The most interesting thing is that even the descendants of those who once saved priceless paintings from destruction did not know about the merits of their fathers and grandfathers. As the grandson of one of the active participants in those events said, “my grandfather didn’t really like talking about the war.”

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru