A HISTORIAN in northeastern Poland says the moss-covered ruins of a German World War II bunker may hide Russia’s precious Amber Room, a national treasure that went missing during the war.

    The 18th-century Amber Room, made of amber panels and gold leaf, was fitted into Russia’s Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg, where it remained until it was looted by Germany’s Nazis in 1941.

    Tests in September by earth-penetrating radar in the woods near the Polish village of Mamerki suggest there’s a small room at the base of a bunker that was the German army’s wartime headquarters, according to the head of Mamerki Museum, Bartlomiej Plebanczyk.

    The bunker is located about 100 kilometers from Russia’s Kaliningrad region — which was the German region of Koenigsberg during the war and where the Nazis brought the Amber Room in 1941.

    Plebanczyk told TVN24 on Friday that he is “almost certain” that the crumbling concrete bunker hides the Russian treasure. He has informed local Polish authorities in the town of Wegorzewo, who will now decide what to do.

    Wegorzewo Deputy Mayor Andrzej Lachowicz told TVN24 authorities will try to see what’s in the bunker. “If not the Amber Room, then maybe some other treasure,” Lachowicz said.

    The British heavily bombed Koenigsberg in 1944. The current whereabouts of the Amber Room is unknown. In a project that took decades, Russian authorities reconstructed a replica of the Amber Room at the same palace.

    (SD-Agencies)