A most interesting book, that I couldn't put down for a couple of days, I followed up by getting "Massacre at Oradour", which certainly gives a new insight into the event. This review, although interesting, doesn't do the book justice at all. -Roger

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"CURSE OF HERODS GOLD" by Peter Donnelly

Torture, heretics burned alive, a Nazi massacre and a 2,000-year trail of greed and intrigue still haven't solved one of the greatest mysteries of history: Where is the fabulous treasure hoard of the Temple of Jerusalem!

Of all the legends of huge hidden hoards of wealth. I none has attracted as much sustained interest as that of the priceless haul looted nearly 2,000 years ago from the Temple of Jerusalem.

Men have been tortured, slaughtered even burned alive by those greedy for it's wealth and power, and around it has been spun a web of scandal and intrigue subterfuge and deception, drawing in monarchs and monks, secret occult societies, a famous film star and a pool parish priest who became suddenly rich.

The fabled treasure was desperately sought by Adolf Hitler's henchmen in the dying days of the war, and may have sparked an appalling massacre, which still haunts France.

And, in more recent years, it is said to have ensnared a British businessman - one of the co-authors of an intriguing new book about the treasure - in a nightmare of interrogation and imprisonment.

The story begins less than 40 years after the Crucifixion, when Roman legions attacked Jerusalem and the Temple, built by King Herod on the site of the Temple of Solomon. They are reputed to have taken away tons of gold, silver, precious gems and priceless sacred treasures.

The haul was held in Rome's imperial treasury, with wealth looted from an over the world, until the city fell in AD410 to invading barbarians, the Visigoths, heralding the disintegration of the Roman Empire.

The Visigoths set off further west, establishing a kingdom occupying most of modern Spain and South-West France, with its capital at Toulouse and one of its fortified centres of power at Rhedae, now the charming hilltop visage of Rennes-le-Chateau in the Pyrenees.

It is here, legend claims, that the Temple treasure is buried in ancient mines, subterranean galleries and an extensive network of caves - and it is not the only fabulous fortune believed to be hidden in the region.

Queen Blanche of Castille, regent of France in the mid-13th century, is said to have moved much of the royal wealth from Paris to Rennes because of the growing power of her nobles.

Meanwhile, such was the greed for the fabled Temple treasure that two distinct religious groups were suspected of keeping the secret of its whereabouts.

In 1244, Crusaders cornered the heretic Cathars, a religious sect condemned by the Church, on the mountaintop of Montsegur not far from Rennes, in the name of defending 'orthodox' Christianity, but more probably to try to find the treasure. The Cathars refused to reveal their secret and were burned alive.

More horror came in 1307 when King Philip IV had warrior-monks of the Knights Templar order tortured and killed in a vain attempt to discover the source of the wealth they had inexplicably amassed.

But the treasures remained uncovered until just over 100 years ago, when the sudden lavish pending of a village priest triggered an upsurge of interest in the area, and a virtual industry of mystery and speculation.

When the Abbe Berenger Sauniere arrived in his parish of Rennes in 1885, the once mighty Visigoth fortress was a small neglected village of 300 souls.

He borrowed money for repairs to the dilapidated church of St Mary Magdalene, and fell deeply debt to local tradesmen.

Then, after apparently finding a tomb containing a pot of gold coins (worthless medallions, he told workmen) and a small parchment in a glass vial, the once poor priest completed work on the church and created a magnificent private estate, with a luxurious, finely furnished villa and ornamental gardens. He lived, and spent, like a lord, said villagers, and entertained visitors with lavish hospitality.

His bishop demanded to know the source of his new-found wealth, but Sauniere declined to answer. He refused to move to another parish and was suspended, but villagers still attended his services at the villa.

Even when the Church authorities tried to confiscate his property they failed. Everything was held in the name of the priest's housekeeper, Marie Denarnaud and so could not be touched.

Eventually, the battle of wills took its toll on Sauniere's health and he died of a heart attack in 1917. He was given the Last Rites by an old priest friend, who was said to have been so shocked by Sauniere's last confession that he became a changed man.

Villagers had no doubt that their priest had stumbled across a fortune - a theory supported when - Marie told a friend: 'The people who live here are walking on gold without knowing it.'

Soon after, the area became a magnet for future Nazi SS officer Otto Rahn, who was fascinated by the myth of the Temple treasure, particularly the Cathars. He believed they knew the secret of the Holy Grail, which is one of the most enduring archetypes of Christian mysticism.

The exact nature of the Grail is a mystery. To some, it represents the- blood of Christ or the chalice of the Last Supper. To others it could be the secret of eternal life, the philosopher's stone (which could turn any substance into gold), the Ark of the Covenant (the chest which contained all Jewish lore) - or the fabled treasure of the Temple of Jerusalem.

Rahn's fascination led him, at in 1931, to make a thorough investigation of ancient Cathar sites, including the ruined fortress of Montsegur. He was reportedly visited there by Marlene Dietrich and the jazz singer Josephine Baker, who spent much time with the occult circles of Paris, which attracted romanticists, surrealists and free-thinkers.

Dietrich was a close friend of French artist, poet and film-maker Jean Cocteau, said to have been a Grand Master of the Priory of Sion - officially, a Roman Catholic order of chivalry dedicated to a moral and spiritual regeneration but also said to be the self-appointed guardian of the Temple treasure; The star was also friend with the novelist Andre Malraux, another high-ranking member of the Priory, who was a Resistance hero and member of Charles de Gaulle's post-war government.

What were Dietrich and Baker doing in this remote region of France in the early Thirties? And why should the area also have such an attraction for the Nazis?

One spur was a book based on Otto Rahn's Cathar discoveries published when he returned to Germany in 1933.

It immediately found favour in the Nazi party, and Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, is said to have given a specially bound copy to Hitler as a birthday present.

Rahn was later admitted to the elite Nazi military corps, despite his Jewish parentage, and was soon on Himmler's personal staff. From then on, German interest in the Rennes region increased, and locals became suspicious of the influx of strangers showing such interest in the treasure.

Rahn was reportedly killed in a mysterious Alpine skiing accident in 1939 - his body was never found - soon after suddenly resigning his commission in the wake of talk of a Nazi inquiry into his unsupervised treasure-hunting.

But Nazi interest did not wane with his death. Their activity continued in the remote region, far removed from the front lines of conflict, throughout the war.

In 1943, a group of German geologists, historians and archaeologists were said to have carried out excavations throughout the area and locals recall a Nazi division of engineers active inside a ring of Cathar castles that encloses the supposed sites of the treasure.

What exactly were they hunting? Hitler and Himmler were greatly interested in tales of chivalry, and the SS was modeled on the Teutonic and Templar Knights.

Hitler had presented to Germany the so-called Spear of Destiny, which was said to have been used by a Roman soldier to pierce Christ's side while he was on the cross, and Himmler was contemplating a resurrection of a 'Round Table of Knights' to glorify the Third Reich.

Imagine the tempting possibilities of acquiring the Grail, which is supposed to have caught Christ's blood at the Crucifixion, or even the fabled Ark of the Covenant. The sheer symbolic value of such treasures falling into Nazi hands would have been incalculable

But the need to sustain the war effort in the face of growing Allied success was changing the priorities of the German High Command and the symbolism of the treasures may well have been relegated to second place in the face of growing wartime pressures.

Increased and almost frantic Nazi activity in the Rennes area may also have been a last-ditch attempt by a cabal, including Himmler and Hitler's deputy Martin Bormann to acquire the treasure for themselves before it was too late.

According to U.S. Colonel Howard Buechner, who in 1991 published the book Emerald Cup - Ark of Gold, the Nazis did find at least some of the riches.

He claimed that on March 15 1944, the SS of finer in charge of the hunt discovered gold coins from the early days of the Roman Empire and items 'believed to have come from the Temple of Solomon'. He sent a one-word message to Himmler in Berlin: 'Eureka'.

The haul was transported to Germany and ended up in the village of Merkers, 320kms from Berlin. When Merkers fell to the Allied forces, Buechner was in the advance party and revealed how a staggering amount of gold and art treasures was discovered in a local potassium mine.

His claims must be taken seriously because it is on record that, following the capture of the town, the top Allied commanders Eisenhower Patton and Bradley took time to inspect the treasure for themselves.

What they saw, though, may have been only part of the haul. So what happened to the rest? Here we must examine what happened in the days after the Allies' D-Day invasion on June 6,1944.

The crack 2nd SS Panzer division was ordered to the Normandy beaches, and with it went a convoy transporting a treasure of gold ingots. By June 9, the convoy had reached the small town of St Junien, near Limoges, and at 2pm on the next day, 120 SS soldiers descended on the nearby visage of Oradour-sur-Glane searching for 'prohibited merchandise'.

Within a few hours, the village had been destroyed and all but six of Oradour's 648 men, women and children murdered.

The motive for the massacre a bitter memory for the French has been accepted as a reprisal for two German soldiers killed by the Resistance.

In fact, the first public hint of an alternative motive did not come for another 38 years. Robin Mackness a freelance investment manager was stopped by French Customs officials outside Lyon in 1982 and arrested for being in possession of 20 gold bars, some stamped with the Nazi initials RB - Reichsbank.

When questioned, Mackness said he had been asked by a Swiss bank to contact 'Raoul', a client in Toulouse whose identity he will not reveal who wanted him to deliver the gold to another agent, who would take it into safekeeping in the bank.

Where had the gold come from? Raoul told Mackness he'd found it when he and six other Resistance fighters unexpectedly ran into a small convoy near Oradour on the night before the massacre. All but he and a German, who ran away, were killed in a fierce fight.

Afterwards, claimed Raoul, he found 600kg of gold ingots in the back of a truck and buried them in field. It was that ambush, Raoul claimed, which sparked the massacre - and it was some of those ingots, which were found on Mackness by French Customs.

'What should have been a relatively simple matter, in the heart of France, became a 21 month nightmare of imprisonment and interrogation,' says Mackness.

'For, without knowing its significance I said I was heading for Annemasse near Geneva - the place that the Priory of Sion, the secret society at the heart of the whole mystery, lodge their statutes'.

'In fact, I was delivering it to a contact in Evian, on the French shore of Lake Geneva, but I realised that to have admitted this would have disagreeable consequences for my contact there'.

'I therefore invented the destination of Annemasse, which prompted a run of telephone calls and a great deal of excitement'.

Mackness was charged with attempting to smuggle gold bars from France to Switzerland, and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

'As my sentence progressed, I was subjected to mounting demands that I reveal who had given me the gold and why I was taking it to Annemasse,' he says.

'I was eventually released after 21 months, but only after a French journalist threatened to bring down considerable embarrassment on the authorities.'

This intense interest in the Mackness affair raised suspicions of an official attempt to cover up the real reason for the tragedy at Oradour.

For the convoy hijack described by Raoul might, despite his version of events, have been the work of a 'rogue' Resistance unit motivated by self-interest, not patriotism.

Interestingly, France's President Mitterrand was a signatory to an amnesty granted to soldiers conscripted by the Germans from Alsace, the region temporarily annexed by Hitler in 1940, who took part in the Oradour massacre.

Despite provoking outrage among those who had lost relatives and friends at Oradour, the amnesty was granted, ostensibly in the interests of French unity.

But it is just as probable that the French did not want to risk any incriminating details leaking out about the stolen gold.

So what of the great treasure of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem? Mackness and his co-author Guy Patton believe much of it still lies hidden in South-West France.

Will it ever be found? Myths surrounding the hoard have sustained generations of treasure hunters. The region has been surveyed with Specialist equipment, infra-red photographic gear and metal detectors. The hunters are now banned, allegedly because of the damage they caused.

What is certain is that no end has yet been written to this long and complex story. But there is a persistent local assertion that the 16th-century French physician and astrologer known as Nostradamus predicted that gold and treasure from antiquity will one day be discovered in the region. ============================================ • Adapted from "Web of Gold" by Robin Mackness and Guy Patton published by Macmillan on January (c)2000 Robin Mackness and Guy Patton. ===================================== Daily Mail (UK), Saturday, January 15th 2000

Many news-worthy items do not make it onto the online internet websites of the various newspapers or other news agencies for a variety of reasons.

The following news items are my attempt to rectify this ommission, articles are gleaned from various UK newspapers and are topics that I consider important or interesting enough. Any typo's are probably my fault due to the scanning & proof reading process.