In the spring of 1945, a couple of weeks before the liberation of the Netherlands from its Nazi occupiers, five German soldiers buried four ammunition boxes filled with gold, jewels and watches in a woodsy part of a sleepy Dutch village.
Nazi soldiers had snatched the valuables, which could be worth millions, off the street after they were blown out of a bank vault during an explosion in the city of Arnhem in the late summer of 1944, documents show.
What the men who buried the loot probably did not know was that one of their fellow soldiers, a man named Helmut Sonder, was lying in the bushes with a war injury, observing the scene and committing it to memory. Afterward, Mr. Sonder drew a meticulous map that showed exactly where (by three poplar trees) and how deep (about 1.7 to 2.3 feet) the treasure had been buried.
