Polonaise with an Ingot

Another story from the detective office “Krulevskaya and Partners” is devoted to the search for the gold of the Polish Bank that disappeared during World War II.

Just before the war, the vaults of the Polish Bank contained quite respectable valuables—amounting to around 87 million US dollars.

Three days after the war began, the Polish leadership urgently decided to evacuate the gold and foreign currency reserves of the Polish Bank.

On September 9, 1939, the gold was sent, without needless delays, to the border with Romania, to the city of Snjatyń.

Cars and railway cars were dispatched to the quiet backwater town. The leadership of the secret operation to export the bank’s gold reserve was entrusted to the former head of Polish intelligence Colonel Ignatius Mateysky and the Minister of Industry Erik Flaryevsky.

All valuables were loaded into a special train that safely crossed the Polish–Romanian border. Nevertheless, shortly beforehand, from the transport traveling out of border Brest, unknown people unloaded 70 crates of gold worth 22 million zlotys. In the chaos of the war days, those crates never reached their destination!..

…As a historian, this is very interesting. Let me tell you more: it’s a good topic for a doctoral thesis. But what does a gold bar found on our shore have to do with it—and how could the employees of “Krulevskaya and Partners” be helpful to you?