(Dan Tri) – A team of Polish divers discovered a shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, which they believe may contain the `Amber Room` – a $500 million treasure that the Nazis once stole.
The transparently restored amber room at the Catherine Palace, St Petersburg, Russia (Photo: Times).
Dailymail reported that the Polish Baltictech divers group on September 6 began exploring to search for clues at the wreck of the German Nazi ship SS Karlsruhe, lying at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
The `Amber Room` was a gift from Prussia King Friedrich Wilhelm I to Russian Tsar Peter I in 1716. The walls of the room are covered entirely in amber along with gold and precious jewelry at their current value.
The Nazis stole this room from the Catherine Palace in St Petersburg in 1941. At that time, the Soviet Union tried to hide this room by covering it with wallpaper but the plan failed.
The room was then taken by the Nazis by rail to Koenigsberg Castle in East Prussia – now Kaliningrad.
Before losing the war, German fascist leader Adolf Hitler ordered precious objects to be transferred from East Prussia to Germany.
The diving group believes that the Karlsruhe wreck may contain the `Amber Room` (Photo: Baltictech).
The Baltictech team discovered the wreck of the Karlsruhe, a ship that was sunk in 1945, 69 km from the Polish coastal town of Ustka.
Head of Baltictech Tomek Stachura previously said: `The Amber Room was last seen in Koenigsberg. If the Germans took the ‘Amber Room’ across the Baltic Sea, the steamship Karlsruhe could be the means of transport.`
The team of divers said they initially used a diving robot with a camera to explore the wreck at a depth of 88 m above the sea surface and discovered a series of locked boxes on the ship.
This group will perform 12 diving missions per day, each time consisting of a group of 3 people.
This is not the first time theories about the whereabouts of the `Amber Room` have been put forward.
In 1979, the Soviet Union restored the `Amber Room` in the Catherine Palace and this process took 24 years to complete.
