BERLIN -- A German lawmaker and part-time treasure hunter claimed Thursday that he may have found where the Nazis stashed pieces of the storied Amber Room treasure plundered from the Soviet Union during World War II.
Working from a map and notes that were among the possessions of a dead German air force radio operator, Hans-Peter Haustein maintains that he has now pinpointed the location of the treasure buried in the mountains in the state of Saxony on the Czech border.
Haustein said he would give more details about his discovery at a news conference Friday.
The claim has been met with skepticism by experts, who point out that stories of the Amber Room surface regularly, only to be proved wrong.
"We hear people saying they found the Amber Room three or four times a year," said Larisa Bardovskaya, director of the Tsarskoye Selo museum outside St. Petersburg that housed the original Amber Room and has displayed a copy of it since 2003.
Working from a map and notes that were among the possessions of a dead German air force radio operator, Hans-Peter Haustein maintains that he has now pinpointed the location of the treasure buried in the mountains in the state of Saxony on the Czech border.
Haustein said he would give more details about his discovery at a news conference Friday.
The claim has been met with skepticism by experts, who point out that stories of the Amber Room surface regularly, only to be proved wrong.
"We hear people saying they found the Amber Room three or four times a year," said Larisa Bardovskaya, director of the Tsarskoye Selo museum outside St. Petersburg that housed the original Amber Room and has displayed a copy of it since 2003.