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HALBERSTADT (Germany): German workmen are hauling Communist cash out of a Nazi-era tunnel network in a bizarre operation that could serve as a crash course in the country’s turbulent history.
Their task is to destroy a treasure luring thieves to this forbidding place 200 kms south of Berlin — former East Germany’s entire paper cash, still sought by collectors 12 years after it ceased to be legal tender with unification.
Soldiers moved 620 million banknotes here in 1990 and 1991 on the instructions of the East German central bank, or Staatsbank, which had expected the money to rot away.
But many of the “Ostmarks”, which include rarities such as 200 and 500 mark denominations that never entered circulation, as well as 100 mark notes bearing the face of Karl Marx, stayed in pristine condition because the tunnels are cool and dry.
State-owned bank Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau (KfW), which took responsibility for the cash in 1994 when it acquired the Staatsbank, thought the cash would stay out of reach for ever.
It was walled in behind two metres of concrete. The maze-like tunnel system, built by slave workers in 1944, is locked with hydraulically operated steel doors.
Tons of gravel were poured onto the cash. Guard dogs patrol a high perimeter fence surrounding the area. Automatic alarms were installed. And the nearby forest is filled with ticks that eagerly bite passers-by.
Yet the lure of the cash proved too great.
SOCIALIST MILLIONAIRES: Checks last year found that someone had got into the tunnel through a ventilation shaft, knocked a hole in the concrete wall and become a Socialist millionaire overnight.
KfW dispatched guards to the site who promptly caught two men making off with thousands of the notes. They now face trial for theft.
Ironically, the Communist money physically outlived Germany’s treasured Deutschemark, shredded with the January introduction of the euro. Officially at par with the West German mark during the Cold War, Ostmarks were worth a fraction of that on the black market.
Since March, workers have been shifting the cash, which is mixed up with gravel, sorting it out on conveyor belts and driving it to an incinerator in western Germany.
Some of the notes are loose, others are in sacks and some are still sealed in plastic. Work is expected to be completed at the end of June.
Deafening earth movers echo through the large tunnels that were hewn through the rock by prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp.
The Nazis had wanted to set up an underground arms factory to avoid Allied air raids but it never entered production, said KfW’s Volk.—Reuters
