An expert on the trail of lost Nazi treasures potentially worth billions believes he has found a cache of paintings hidden deep under the forests of Germany – but is being blocked from digging up the hoard by the local bureaucracy.
Buckhart List, 75 from Austria, is certain that the SS left a stockpile of stolen goods from a Hungarian Jewish art collector in a chamber some 100-140ft under a forest clearing near the village of Deutschkatharinenberg.
The journalist and author thinks the Nazis brought potentially 800 paintings – among them works by Monet, Cezanne and Pissaro – as well as gold and jewellery today ‘worth billions’ to chambers deep underground during the war.
A geophysical survey hopes to end the search after more than a decade of speculation, but Mr List now says the Saxony authorities have prevented him from going any further because a Stone Age tool was found about half a mile away, placing the area off-limits for archaeological digs.
In an appeal to continue his work, he told The Times: ‘I don’t want to take anything for myself. I know this belongs to people … who lost their lives.’
