• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1896 0

map pouch, like the ones used by soldiers during the war. It was covered in mildew. Its contents were wet through and stuck together. What could be deciphered were typewritten sheets of orders, reports, parts of a Konigsberg town plan and various SS documents with passport photos of his father [SS Sturmbannfiihrer 'Ringel'], one of which bore Himmler's signature. 'Rudi Ringel' was only thirteen but old enough to understand the significance.7

So the map that 'Rudi Ringel' recalled seeing was of Konigsberg, not Germany. Geissler's story was still at odds with this one.

Kuchumov asked 'Rudi Ringel' to reproduce from memory the contents of the map pouch and noted that the witness reconstructed seven documents, each of which he signed as 'true copies'. Kuchumov initialled them. Comrade Wagnerman translated them. Comrade Shaposhikovna of the KGB 'certified' them.

The first reconstructed document was a letter addressed to 'Rudi Ringel's' father, dated December 1944:

To SS Sturmbannfiihrer 'Ringel'. It is supposed that soon in Konigsberg Operation Grime will begin. It will then be necessary for you, as agreed, to assume your responsibility for the evacuation of the Amber Room. Borders B-Sch-Kniproderstrasse, Steindamm, Reihe/BU3UP, visible from streets Jakobstrasse, Gezekusplatz. After burying it, blow up the building. Then you and your officers go to place [name missing], moving there as agreed. When you have successfully completed this mission please confirm by courier. Heil Hitler.

Although the street names are garbled, what was almost certainly being described here was a location in Konigsberg, somewhere adjacent to Steindamm Strasse.

'Rudi Ringel' recalled that the next document he read was marked 'Top Secret' and addressed to 'the Main Office of the Reich's Security Minister V.V.S. (military air forces department)': 'Order is executed. Action Amber Room is finished. Entrance according to orders has been blown up. Many victims due to enemy action. I am coming to agreed place [name missing].' 'Rudi Ringel' recalled his father, the SS Sturmbannfiihrer, had signed the message although it was not dated.

Kuchumov sketched a map of the centre of Konigsberg. At the junction of Steindamm Strasse and Lange Reihe the great curator marked Steindamm Church, a pond and a First World War monument. An area running between the church and the pond was shaded and labelled 'bunker'. If 'Rudi Ringel' could be relied on, then the evacuation of the Amber Room, codenamed Operation Griine (Green), had gone ahead and the Soviet treasure had been taken from Konigsberg Castle and concealed somewhere near Steindamm Church. We wonder how the Stasi could have reached the conclusion that the Amber Room was evacuated to Germany.8

Frustratingly, the five remaining documents transcribed by 'Rudi Ringel' are missing from our file. We call St Petersburg and ask the Professor to recheck the index. She soon gets back to us: 'Nothing.' We revisit the Ministry of Truth to see if the Stasi was sent a record of Kuchumov's debriefing of 'Rudi Ringel'. Again nothing.

All we have before us from the literature archive are yet more of Kuchumov's newspaper clippings and they concern Erich Koch.

As Strauss predicted in 1959, Erich Koch soon began to talk again about the Amber Room, leaking information to his guards at Mokatovska Prison. In September 1961 he also spoke to Polish journalist Vladimir Orlovsky and then in October to Izvestiya: 'Erich Koch knows of two bunkers where art works were hidden by Rohde and Dr Helmut Will.9 There, among other items, are some things from his own collection. He cannot be LOO per cent sure that the Amber Room is there but he thinks it almost certainly is.'10 Although Koch still denied any responsibility for the Amber Room, he was almost certain that it had been moved to a bunker beneath Konigsberg, a story that seemed to tally with the evidence of letter-writer 'Rudi Ringel'.

Three years later the Polish authorities commuted Erich Koch's death sentence to life, publicly stating that the prisoner had been reprieved because