Lake Toplitz

Have you ever been on the sides of Lake Toplitz? It’s in the mountains of Styria (Austria) and because of its particularity (the lake reaches a depth of 103 meters, but below 20 meters the water is salty and without oxygen with very insidious currents crossing the lake) it was used between 1943 and 1944 by the German navy to experiment with depth charges, torpedoes and submersibles.

Is SS treasury still there?

But do you know what the mystery that surrounds the Toeplitz is about? As reported also by the tv show “Myth Hunters”, in the latter days of World War II a group of SS officers came to Topliz to hide in the depths of the lake a large number of waterproof boxes. What was there in those boxes? In 1959 a team of researchers funded by the German magazine Stern succeeded to recoup a share of them, discovering that they contained millions of fake 5 pounds banknotes.

Adolf Burger is a Jewish Slovak typographer, memoir writer, and Holocaust survivor involved in Operation Bernhard.

Treacherous water even today

it was part of the treasure of the Operation Bernhard (more boxes, along with explosives and German weapons, were recovered in 1983), with which the Nazis tried, unsuccessfully, to bring down the British economy. But another treasure remains to be discovered: according to numerous witnesses, the SS would have plunged into treacherous waters of Toplitz (some divers reported a layer of submerged logs at about 50 meters of depth that would make it difficult and dangerous every downhill at lower altitudes) also very heavy boxes, perhaps containing gold and artworks stolen during the war.

No more researches for 99 years

If indeed there is the treasure yet to be found, don’t hope it can be discovered any time soon: in 2009 the Austrian authorities banned diving in the lake for 99 years. The Nazi treasure that perhaps lies at the bottom of the Toplitz can’t be discovered until 2108, unless a “treasure hunter” will be able to steal it before, despite all prohibitions.