In 1926, Semyon Neshev, a peasant from the Crimean village of Marfovka, was mining a building stone near Kerch and stumbled upon a burial of a Gothic king with gold decorations dating back to the 3rd-5th centuries.
As a conscientious citizen, Semyon handed everything over to the authorities. The find was estimated at $ 10 million and placed in the Kerch Museum. Thanks to the treasures, an ordinary provincial museum in the blink of an eye became famous, rose to the value of the world level. During the war, even the rulers of Hitler's Third Reich laid eyes on Gothic values.
In September 1941, the Germans were already on the outskirts of Kerch. The Kerch Museum was preparing its exhibits for evacuation. Museum treasures were neatly packed in 19 boxes. The most valuable things were packed into one large plywood suitcase, upholstered with black dermantine.
Kerch Museum of the late 19th early 20th centuries
The suitcase contained 719 gold and silver items unique of their kind:
- coins of the Mithridates time, Bosporan, Pontic from the so-called Taritak treasure found in 1935;
- a gold diadem from the Martha treasure, decorated with garnets and carnelian, thin gold earrings and buckles;
- gold plates, decorated with images of ancient Scythians, precious plaques with images of young warriors and a sphinx;
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- a medieval collection of bracelets, rings, rings, buckles, medallions depicting ancient Greek gods, masks, gold plates, petals and needles;
- coins from Panticapaeum made of pure gold, coins of the Roman and Greek times, Byzantine, Russian, Genoese, Turkish coins, icons, medals and much more.
The suitcase, which in official papers began to be called "gold", was tied with belts, sealed with a wax seal of the Kerch City Committee and, together with eighteen other suitcases with less valuable exhibits and documents, were loaded onto one of the boats and evacuated to Taman, accompanied by Museum Director Marty and an instructor from the Kerch City Committee VKP (b) Ivanenkova.
The journey of the "golden suitcase" to the deep rear began on September 26, 1941. It turned out to be dangerous, tragic and in many ways mysterious, and to such an extent that there are still no answers to many questions.
The Germans mercilessly bombed the Kerch Strait, but the boat with a valuable cargo arrived safely in Taman. From there, the cargo was sent to Krasnodar, where the exhibits were transferred to the local history museum. Local workers drew up an act of acceptance of treasures, which included all 719 gold and silver items. After that, Marty took to the hospital with a heart attack - the road cost him a lot of strength and health.
Five months later, the enemy approached Krasnodar. By all means, it was necessary to save the Kerch treasures. The cargo went to Armavir, where upon arrival the suitcase was opened in the building of the city executive committee and the contents were checked against the inventory in the presence of a special commission - everything was in place. The suitcase was sealed and placed in the guarded special storage of the city executive committee.
However, the bombing of Armavir soon began, and during the next raid a high-explosive bomb hit the building of the Armavir City Executive Committee, where there were boxes with Kerch exhibits. All of them were burnt to the ground, only the "golden suitcase" survived.
Items from the burial near the village of Marfovka
In August 1942, the Germans entered Armavir. An employee of the Armavir City Executive Committee, Anna Avdeikina, managed to take the “golden suitcase” out of the city at the last moment. Here's what she said about it:
When Soviet troops withdrew from Armavir, the city became ominously deserted. In the city executive committee, the doors were wide open, the wind was blowing along the empty corridors. Despite the fact that many documents were taken out, there was a "golden suitcase" in the room. Perhaps, in the bustle and haste, everyone forgot about him. And his appearance was unpresentable.
Anna Avdeykina, with the help of her nephew, in spite of the most severe bombing, pulled out a suitcase from the collapsing building of the city executive committee. They dragged a suitcase with valuables weighing 80 kilograms to an evacuation collection point, hoping to have time to send it out of the city. There Anna handed the suitcase to the chairman of the Malykh city executive committee, who, according to the instructions, loaded it into a truck, ordered it to go to the village of Spokoinaya and there give it to the head of the State Bank, Yakov Markovich Loboda.
The road was constantly fired upon, nevertheless Avdeykina reached the village and handed the suitcase to Loboda, after which she mixed with the crowd of refugees who were trying to get away from the city. But the people did not go far, they were detained by German machine gunners. Anna destroyed the inventory of jewelry from the "golden suitcase" and her documents so that the Germans would not know that she was an employee of the Armavir City Executive Committee. She managed to escape from the filtration camp and until the liberation of Armavir she worked in the rear.
Armavir, 1943
In February 1943, after the liberation of Armavir from the Nazis, returning home, Anna learned that during the occupation of the city, the Gestapo came for her, who carefully searched the entire house and the area adjacent to the house. They asked everyone where she had gone, who helped her and, most importantly, what things she took with her. They were especially interested in a certain suitcase, which could be among the things. So, they hunted for a golden suitcase and followed on the heels of those who were responsible for it. It looks like there was a traitor among his own.
After the war, this version was confirmed: from Kerch itself, a special Sonderkommando followed the golden suitcase, which included archaeologists from Berlin. The brigade acted on the direct orders of Heinrich Himmler. The German bonza believed that the Gothic treasure should belong to Great Germany, since the Ostrogoths are one of the branches of the ancient Germanic race that lived in the Crimea in the 3rd century AD.
The adventures of the golden suitcase continued. The village Spokoynaya turned out to be not so calm - the Germans got there too. Director of the State Bank of the village Spokoinaya Yakov Loboda went to the partisans, taking with him a "golden suitcase". The art critic E. Konchin, who had been searching for a "golden suitcase" for a long time, wrote that in the partisan detachment only the leaders knew about the stored jewelry and were aware of the full responsibility for the safety of national property.
In November 1942, the detachment was surrounded. The Germans combed every inch of the land in search of partisans. On December 9, 1942, the commander decided to disband the detachment. It was decided to bury personal weapons, equipment, documents in different places. Only two people knew about each cache. Unfortunately, it is not known who hid the "golden suitcase", maybe Loboda himself did it.
Armavir partisans
On December 14, 1942, Yakov Markovich Loboda and several partisans were captured by the Nazis and shot. Did the punishers succeed in knocking out information about the treasure from the partisans? This is the secret that the dead took with them to the grave.
After the liberation of the Soviet territory from the invaders, attempts were made to find Kerch gold. So, in a letter from the Deputy People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR N. F. Gavrilin, sent on June 24, 1944 to the Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, State Security Commissar of the 2nd rank S. N. Kruglov was sent a letter from the Deputy People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR N. F. Gavrilin, which briefly described the history of the evacuation of the gold fund of the Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum.
It said, in particular:
In January 1944, the Museum Directorate of the RSFSR People's Commissariat of Education asked the head of the NKVD Directorate of the Krasnodar Territory to investigate the circumstances of the loss in the Spokoinensky partisan detachment of the gold fund of the Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum. But no answer has yet been received.
In the spring of 1944, the chairman of the Armavir City Executive Committee V. P. Malykh, being with me in the presence of the head of the Museum Directorate A. D. Manevsky, said that the suitcase was found at the site of the partisans' parking near the village of Spokoinaya. But the suitcase was empty. The People's Commissariat of Education asks you to give instructions to investigate the case of the loss of the Kerch Museum's gold fund.
It is known that this was followed by interrogations of the surviving partisans. They were interrogated harshly and meticulously, some of them lost their party cards. However, it was not possible to get to the bottom of the truth - the treasures disappeared irrevocably.
Another story took place after the war. In the summer of 1946, the boys found an ancient oval-shaped gold buckle in the forest near Armavir and took it to the police. People were sent to the place of discovery to search for treasures. But nothing else was found.
Used materials from the article by Lyubov Sharova
