For decades the whispers persisted among the factory workers and lumberjacks of southwest Poland that a Nazi train laden with plundered gold, jewels and artworks had been hidden beneath the Owl Mountains since the waning days of World War II.
Legend had it that the valuables, stolen mainly from Polish Jews who had been dispatched to concentration camps, were hastily loaded into an armored military transport in early 1945 and shipped westward from the German city of Breslau to prevent the loot from falling into the hands of the advancing Soviet Red Army.
Historians long dismissed the story as folkloric, and Communist-era rulers who reportedly explored the labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers under the Walbrzych region found nothing to confirm the local lore that the train was last seen traveling toward the castle town’s subterranean tracks.