The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [54]
The Soviet team analysed travel permits made out in Rohde's name, from which they fished dates, times and places. On 18 October, the day after his second letter to Countess von Schwerin, Rohde received permission to travel to her castle, Wildenhoff. On 2 November he was issued with a permit to embark on a five-day trip to the home of Countess Sabina Keyserlingk in Rautenburg, fifty-five miles north-east of Konigsberg, near Tilsit (today Sovetsk in Kaliningrad Province). The outcome of this journey was confirmed in a letter to her, written by Rohde on LO November, three days after he returned, in which he advised the Countess that he had brought from her abandoned manor to Konigsberg 'two cars' of art works. Rohde's mission to find a new hiding place for the Amber Room, Kuchumov noted, was complicated by the need to evacuate art works from country estates belonging to aristocrats who had already fled East Prussia.
Gauleiter Erich Koch, the highest authority in East Prussia, signed the next permit, issued on 8 November 1944. He gave Rohde a mandate 'to take any measures in guarding, moving and evacuating any pieces of art from Prussia'. Clearly the German curator was at the centre of the Nazi art establishment in East Prussia and treasures were being shipped in every direction.
Rohde must have barely had time to catch his breath. On 15 November he wrote to the Ministry of Culture in Berlin about plans to evacuate Soviet art works from one East Prussian safe house to another. On 26 November he received orders to travel to Castle Binanen to transfer another art collection back to Konigsberg. But it was the permit issued on L December 1944 that caught Kuchumov's attention, authority to travel to Saxony, several hundred miles to the south-east, in the heart of the Reich. In the bundle was a report of this mission: 'My trip from 3 to LO December 1944 in Saxony'. Rohde had visited two castles, Wechselburg and Kriebstein, both west of Dresden, and concluded that they were secure and watertight hiding places, the perfect locations in which to secure 'irreplaceable treasure'.
A picture was emerging. Here in Rohde's letters was clear evidence that art stored in East Prussia was evacuated further west by the Nazis before the Soviet advance. It was possible that Brusov had been too quick to conclude that the Amber Room had been destroyed in Konigsberg. The last letter in the bundle gave Kuchumov further hope. It was from Rohde to the Ministry of Culture in Berlin and was dated 12 January 1945: I have been packing the Amber Room into containers and they are being sealed. The moment is ready for these panels to be evacuated to Saxony and more correctly they can be sent to Wechselburg in Rochlitz.'6 The letter appeared to conflict with Rohde's statement to Brusov that the Amber Room had remained in Konigsberg Castle until 5 April 1945. Kuchumov concluded that Rohde had lied.
Kuchumov and Tronchinsky began compiling a thirty-three-point list of questions for Alfred Rohde, comparing his statements to Brusov with his letters. Tronchinsky would begin the interrogation light-heartedly with information that was only really of interest to fellow academics: the arrival of the room at Konigsberg Castle and its display there. He would create the impression that he was an amiable party man marking time. Kuchumov calculated that if Tronchinsky could make himself small in the face of Rohde's arrogance, then the German would be unable to resist bragging to his poor Soviet cousin. The plump Russian figure in spectacles, Kuchumov, would remain in the background throughout the interrogation, a silent, brooding force who would conceal the fact that he was running the operation.
On 19March 1946 their train pulled in. General Vasilev, one of Konigsberg's commanders, met Kuchumov and Tronchinsky at the station and insisted on giving them a tour. 'The only buildings that were standing were single cottages at the end of streets, villas in the middle