| Scuba divers search for Jewish gold from Thessaloniki Another almost detective story related to gold stolen by the Nazis is nearing its end. For more than half a century, the minds of adventurers have been worried about the fate of the treasures of the Jewish community of the Greek city of Thessaloniki, robbed by the Nazis during the Second World War. Today begins the final stage of the operation of an international team of divers, which leaves the port of Finikounda, in the south of the Peloponnese peninsula, and descends to the bottom of the Gulf of Messina. Scuba divers are looking for a schooner that either sank on its own or was sunk by the Thessaloniki “Gauleiter” Max Merten, who had previously loaded it with gold, diamonds and other valuables, the total value of which is now estimated at $2.4 billion. In 1943, an SS man promised people life in exchange for a “wallet,” but did not fulfill his promise: the entire community ended their days in the gas chambers of the Treblinka concentration camp.
There is reason to claim that Merten (after the war he was wanted as a war criminal) used the schooner as a personal “stash for old age.” In 1957, he came to Finikounda as a tourist, was identified and put in prison, from where for some reason he was quickly released and allowed to die in peace in 1976. The existence of an amazing cache became known only a few months ago. Then a mysterious figure arose who allegedly received secret information from Merten in prison about the coordinates of the sunken schooner. The “authorities” spent a long time with the informant, who received the nickname Ghost X, and talked at the Central Board of Jewish Communities (CEJC) in Athens. They believed him only after he gave an accurate description of some of the lost jewelry. This could be done from the words of either Merten or their dead owners.
The search work is being carried out under the watchful supervision of the Greek authorities, the Central Election Commission and numerous film crews. The success of the underwater operation may be facilitated by the fact that for decades the Greek Air Force has used the island of Shkiza, located very close to the site of the supposed sinking of the schooner, as a target for target practice and bombing. Naturally, such a neighborhood could quite frighten both Phantom X and any other treasure hunters if they decided to act at their own peril and risk.
The search was preceded by long disputes between interested parties. In the end, it was agreed that if the treasures were found, then one half of them would go to the Greek government, and the second should be divided between CPEO and Phantom X. This situation does not suit, first of all, the legal heirs of the Thessaloniki victims of Nazism. Now in Greece the Jewish population is, according to various sources, from two to five thousand people. Moreover, many of them arrived in recent years from the CIS, taking advantage of the liberal immigration laws of Athens. Before the war there were more than 80 thousand Jews. Their ancestors settled in Hellas in ancient times and, unlike many other European countries, were never persecuted. In the spring of 1941, Greece was divided into three occupation zones: Bulgarian, German and Italian. Of the first two, almost all Jews were deported to the Reich and exterminated. Alexey SLOBODIN |
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