WARSAW, June 15 /TASS/. Explorers have drilled a three-meter well in a basement of one of the former WWII German bunkers in the village of Mamerki, northern Poland, but have failed to find Russia’s precious Amber Room, which was lost during the war, so far, Bartlomiej Plebanczyk, the head of the Mamerki Museum, told TASS on Wednesday.
"We are finishing the first stage of drilling. We are at a depth of 3 meters. If this attempt is unsuccessful, we will move five meters farther - to a different place, to which an earth-penetrating radar had pointed," he added.
According to Plebanczyk, explorers have been drilling since Wednesday morning in a bid to find the way to an empty space. If they do not find anything with the help of the borer, they are going to use a more powerful and accurate geological radar, which will show the location of hollows in the soil - found in the bunker during the previous tests - more accurately.
The bunker is located about 62 miles from Russia’s Kaliningrad region, which was the German region of Koenigsberg before and during the war, where the Nazis brought the Amber Room from Russia’s Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg in 1941.
Tests by earth-penetrating radars in one of the bunker’s tunnels suggested there were hollows in the soil.
Employers of the Mamerki Museum believe that the 18-th century Amber Room, made of amber panels and gold leaf, which went missing during WWII may be hidden there. The Amber Room is a gift of King Frederick Wilhelm I of Prussia to Russian Emperor Peter the Great. The room was brought to St. Petersburg in 1717 and was fitted into Russia’s Catherine Palace in the Tsarskoye Selo imperial residence. Architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli added gilded carving, mirrors and mosaic panels made of agate and jasper to the room’s interior decoration under the rule of Empress Elizabeth of Russia (born 1709-died 1761), the daughter of Emperor Peter the Great. The Amber Room remained intact for about 200 years. It was stolen by German fascists who occupied Tsarskoye Selo during WWII.
A group of field engineers who arrived in Mamerki back in the 1950s-1960s brought a witness with them who claimed that the Germans had unloaded treasures there in 1945. They assumed it could be the famous Amber Room. The field engineers tried to find the hidden treasure for several days. The exploded all the passageways leading to that concrete facility. They halted the search after it had not crowned with success.
Poland announced it would restart searching for Russia’s precious Amber Room in the German bunker in Mamerki, a place which was the headquarters of the Vermakht’s ground troops command during the war, late in May this year.