Plunder by Menachem Kaiser (suggested reading txt) 📗

onto an alternate Poland, where the history was of a different mode, a different mood. In the Poland I knew, the Poland I’d spent so much time in, the history of World War II was bleak, morose, grayscale, was about oppression, suffering, death, concentration camps, ghettos, German brutality, Polish complicity, Jewish genocide. But in this alternate Poland, World War II history was shiny and adventurous, all about mystery and treasure. Obviously this is a false dichotomy. It’s of course inseparable, it’s of course all part of the same country- or even continent-sized historical mess. Nazi treasure and Nazi brutality are hardly unrelated. What it comes down to is where the emphasis is placed. And here, in this alternate Poland, located apparently in Silesia, the emphasis was on mythical trains and mysterious tunnels, sexy and exciting stuff. The Jews—​the ones who’d dug the tunnels, who’d died digging the tunnels, the ones from whom much of that gold (wherever it was or wasn’t) had been stolen—​were abstract and incidental.

I was entranced. I wanted, felt compelled, to see Riese, to visit this alternate Poland. Part of the draw was, simply, how strange it all was. But it went beyond that, it was more than curiosity. This was right around the time I’d met with The Killer, had begun my own search, my own hunt, and on some level I felt a bizarre kinship with these treasure hunters. I can’t really explain it. Our ambitions were obviously very different but on some level I think I felt they rhymed.

I reached out to a woman named Joanna Lamparska, the cited authority in seemingly every Golden Train and Riese article, to ask if she’d be my Silesian guide. She agreed, and a couple of weeks later I, along with Jason and another friend, Maia, met Joanna in a supermarket parking lot in Wrocław. Joanna was in her late forties or early fifties, with dark hair cut short—​one immediately got the sense that this was less about style than utility—​and big eyes that blinked rapidly, giving a (false) impression of guilelessness. She introduced herself to us, we introduced ourselves to her, we climbed into her safari-ready Land Rover, and we were off; there was no tour-guidey opening spiel. We made our way out of the city. The two-lane highway, flat fields on either side and brooding mountains on the horizon, was punctuated by roundabouts and one- or two-intersection villages. Parts of Silesia are fairy-tale gorgeous—​forests, mountains, castles—​and parts are hellishly derelict: many of the towns are former mining towns, gray, depressed, half-abandoned; most of those castles are ruins.

It was an hour-and-a-half drive to the day’s first stop. Joanna was excitable, funny, personable, keeping up a patter about the history and mystery of Silesia: the geography, geology, language, mines, crypts, churches, castles, Upper Silesia versus Lower Silesia, Teutonic Knights, prehistoric cults, something called the Amber Chamber, the Golden Train, Project Riese . . . we had some trouble following, though knowing what I know now I’ll offer in our defense that this is the sort of information that isn’t really received, it’s very gradually absorbed; it’s frankly too weird to comprehend via lesson; you go along for the ride until maybe it starts making some sense or, rather, until you learn to accept how little sense it makes. Also, Joanna wasn’t really a guide in the traditional sense. She knew everything about Silesian mystery, knew all the players, this was her world, her life, but it quickly became clear that this trip wasn’t just about the sites we were visiting or the people we’d be meeting. This was a culture, with its own mores, orthodoxies, heresies, histories, sensibilities; it wasn’t as if there was some route or spiel that could handily explain this. Joanna talked and talked and we asked and asked, pausing only when Joanna’s phone rang. Who was calling? Treasure hunters. They called with tips, updates, news, gossip, complaints, plans; this was a large and active community, with lots of factions. Joanna was a kind of hub: she was trusted, knowledgeable, on good terms with everyone. After each call Joanna would tell us who had called and why. “This is the explorer from Chernobyl. Very interesting and dangerous explorations.” “They are searching the forest near Łodź for mass graves.” “His wife is a psychic and they use her powers to look for treasure.” The way she talked about these treasure hunters/explorers (she used the terms, as far I was able to tell, interchangeably) was strikingly maternal: loving, critical, proud, somewhat embarrassed, somewhat exasperated.

The first Riese site on the itinerary was Sobon, the smallest and least accessible of the complexes. Joanna had arranged for a couple of explorers, Andrzej and Janek, to be our guides; we rendezvoused at a local restaurant. As we pulled up I could tell the two were already there, because in the parking lot was a Land Rover, identical to Joanna’s—​same model, same color, also with a roof rack, also with raised air intake.

Andrzej had a wide, handsome, ruddy face, with soft gray hair that fell onto his forehead and a thick colorless mustache. He wore army green cargo pants, a plain black tee, black no-nonsense boots, and the kind of wide wraparound sunglasses that men who are extremely serious about their outdoor activities wear. He looked like an off-the-clock Polish drill sergeant, with a fancier haircut. Janek had a large round belly and a tight goofy grin and thinning curly hair cut short. He wore pants similar to Andrzej’s and a camo jacket that had on its arm a German flag insignia that he’d Polonized by whiting out the black and yellow bands, leaving it white/red. Janek was quiet and deferential, clearly the sidekick to bluff, voluble Andrzej, who did all the talking, all the deciding, all the explaining. Andrzej was polite but extremely serious, if not quite grave—​as if he sought to project to us how unfrivolous a venture this was.

In the car Joanna had described Andrzej and Janek as “very serious explorers.”