Golden suitcase. Suitcase with gold

At the beginning of 1925, a treasure was found in Crimea near Kerch. Semyon Neshev, a peasant in the Crimean village of Marfovka, came across ancient burials on the site of a plowed mound. Under the slab, among the bones, lay gold jewelry. There were finely crafted ear pendants, tiaras and a woman's headdress decorated with carnelian stones. Such rich decoration indicated that the buried woman occupied a very high position in society during her lifetime. This could well be the grave of Queen Fidea, who ruled the Goths in the first centuries of our era.

By decision of the Soviet authorities, the unique find was transferred to the Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum, famous throughout the world for its exhibition - from ancient Greek sculptures to gold and silver jewelry of the Scythians and Sarmatians. In 1926 the museum celebrated its 100th anniversary. This event was marked by the publication of a special book, a kind of catalog of finds made on the Kerch Peninsula over the entire existence of the museum. The publication became known to all historians and archaeologists on the planet, but not only to them. Sensational materials from the catalog were reprinted by newspapers in other countries. The American Armand Hammer made an inquiry about the cost of this collection of jewelry and received a laconic answer - the Kerch collection is priceless.

In 1941, the Great Patriotic War began. The troops of Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. When the Germans entered Crimea, the treasures were prepared for evacuation. They put it in a large black suitcase, closed it, tightened it with belts, applied seals and, together with the rest of the museum exhibits, took it to the Kerch port. The evacuation of the jewelry took place in the strictest secrecy. The total weight of the treasures was 80 kilograms. Several people knew what exactly was in the black suitcase: the director of the museum, Yuliy Yulievich Marti, the top officials of the city party committee and some high-ranking military officers. Only the gold sent for evacuation did not return.

The Armavir local branch of the Russian Geographical Society (RGS) became interested in this story and began to find out where it had disappeared to. The main assistant in our investigation was a Russian and Soviet journalist, writer and local historian, a native of the village of Nadezhnaya, Otradnensky district, Krasnodar Territory, former editor-in-chief of the Otradnensky regional newspaper “Rural Life”, member of the Union of Journalists of Russia Stanislav Kirillovich Filippov, with whom we met several times in the village of Otradnaya . He initiated us into the secrets and mysteries of this story. This article was written based on his stories.

The loss of 80 kilograms of gold forced us to organize the search extremely carefully. We started working in the archives. The very first discovery directly related to the missing jewelry was made in the archive. We managed to find a document confirming the very fact of evacuation of the treasures. From the document found, it follows that on September 26, 1941, the jewelry, accompanied by the director of the museum Yu. Yu. Marti, was sent from Kerch to Taman. Attached to the act was a list of items in the suitcase at the time of dispatch. All this was called “Special cargo No. 15”.

This inventory read: “Golden diadem, decorated with pomegranate seeds. Large gold buckle. Headbands. Women's jewelry in the shape of sphinxes. Collection of red gold coins in quantities. 112 pieces. Gold beads, masks, belts, bracelets, rings. An ancient icon in a gold frame” and much, much more. A total of 719 products.

The search has begun. The trail of the suitcase was lost between the Crimean and Caucasian shores. The jewelry disappeared into thin air. Where could they have gone? To clear our conscience, we decided to make sure that the treasures did not drown after all. This is the strange picture that the front-line reports of those days revealed to us. At the end of September 1941, German fighters constantly hovered over the Kerch Strait and chased every ship that came into their field of vision. On September 26, three of the five boats heading to Taman were shot. Two of them sank. Information about what happened to the boat, which was transporting museum valuables, including a suitcase with antique gold, could not be found in the port journals. The ship could just as easily reach the shore as it could go to the bottom. The boats, moving away from the fighters, were probably maneuvering, so their remains could lie at the bottom of the strait anywhere. The prospects were not at all rosy, so before deciding on underwater searches, we once again carefully analyzed the information obtained in the archive. And after studying the list of those who died in the strait at the end of September 1941, we began to hope that the search would continue on the shore.

Version one
Treasures on the Shore

The suitcase was accompanied by Yu. Marti, director of the museum. He was not on the list of dead or missing. He was not among those rescued from the water; this gave us hope that the treasure boat had landed after all. It was also possible to find out that the main flow of cargo crossing from Crimea came from the coast to Krasnodar. Accordingly, the valuables we were looking for could have been sent there. We randomly made a request to the local archive to see if the name of the director of the Kerch Museum, Marty, was found in the wartime documents, and received an answer that a copy of the report of Yuliy Yulievich Marty on the evacuation of museum valuables was found. It turned out that their boat then somehow miraculously eluded the German plane. The Junkers constantly hovered over the ship, even pretended to attack, but... did not shoot.

On the shore, special cargo No. 15, along with other museum exhibits, was loaded into military vehicles. From Taman the convoy actually went to Krasnodar. The road was not easy. The convoy was constantly bombed and strafed by German planes. Julius Marti describes these events as follows: “During the raids, we hid in roadside ditches, leaving everything in the cars except our suitcase, which we had to drag with us to the shelter. I was obliged to preserve valuables under any circumstances. This was the party’s instructions.”

When the expedition finally reached its destination, all the exhibits, including the golden suitcase, were hidden in the Krasnodar Local History Museum. Julius Marty drew up a report, signed acts on the transfer of museum valuables to local comrades, and went to the hospital with a heart attack. But all 719 items from the Kerch collection were handed over to him safe and sound. Secret special cargo No. 15 was stored here, in the basements of the museum, for five months. But knowledge about gold was reserved for a narrow circle of people - the director of the museum, the secretary of the party organization and the head of the special department of the NKVD.

Meanwhile, the Germans, having captured Crimea, launched an offensive in the Caucasus. In February 1942, evacuation began in Krasnodar. The golden suitcase was sent away from the front line, to Armavir. And on time. It turns out that the Nazis already knew about the ancient treasures taken from Kerch. An order was received from the SS chief Heinrich Himmler himself - to find the jewelry at all costs. Simultaneously with the capture of Krasnodar, a special Sonderkommando appeared in the city. It included German archaeologists and the famous secret operations specialist Karl Lemke. He was involved in thefts and removal of valuables from museums in German-occupied European countries. And shortly before the war, as it became known, he, under the guise of a journalist, visited Kerch and personally saw the museum’s exhibition.

In the Krasnodar branch, the Gestapo gathered all residents of the city who could know at least something about the museum collection taken out of Crimea. The Nazis were especially interested in gold jewelry. But the Germans collected little information: the exhibits are packed in 19 boxes and in a large black suitcase, which is handled with special care; a week ago, the entire cargo was sent to Armavir under heavy security.

We have established the names and positions of those people who accepted the Kerch collection, including the golden suitcase, for storage in Armavir. In Armavir, special cargo No. 15 was received by Anna Moiseevna Avdeikina, an instructor in the secret department of the city executive committee. And she sent a telegram to Moscow that all the valuables had arrived safe and sound. According to Anna Avdeikina, the suitcase was again sealed with wax, stamped by the Armavir City Executive Committee and hidden in the room where particularly important documents were kept. Then Anna Moiseevna fell ill with typhus and for several weeks was between life and death. I woke up when the Germans had already approached Armavir. Somehow I got out of bed and staggered to the building of the Armavir City Executive Committee. The house was destroyed by an aerial bomb that fell inside. The explosion also destroyed boxes with exhibits of the Kerch Museum. Almost the entire collection was lost. In the surviving rooms everything was upside down, the doors were torn off. Avdeikina entered her office through the broken doorway and couldn’t believe her eyes. A black suitcase protruded from the corner, strewn with trash and papers.

This episode, according to Avdeikina, was recorded two years later by an NKVD investigator: “They found the chairman, you should have seen how he got excited and started looking for the car. The city was bombed. There is dusty twilight and the whistling sound of fragments all around. Finally they brought in an old lorry. The healthy men hardly lifted the suitcase into the back. The chairman ordered me and the driver to drive straight into the mountains to the village of Spokoinaya, and hand over the jewelry to the branch of the district bank. All other exits were already controlled by the Nazis.”

At the moment when Anna Avdeikina was leaving Armavir with a golden suitcase, the German Sonderkommando was entering the city from the other side. In the destroyed building of the city executive committee, the SS men found a pile of rubble - what remained of the Crimean collection. Archaeologists have confirmed that these are former exhibits from the Kerch Museum. But where is the suitcase? The interrogations began again. Soon the Gestapo had a verbal portrait of Anna Avdeikina and her home address.

According to the stories of Armavir residents, when the Germans entered Armavir, the Gestapo immediately arrived at Anna’s house. They thoroughly searched the entire house, even piercing a haystack in the yard with bayonets. The Germans were interested in when and how Avdeikina left the city and what exactly she took with her. And especially how the black suitcase looked in detail. The Nazis managed to establish that Avdeikina with her suitcase left in a truck in a southerly direction. A flight of fighters was immediately scrambled to search for the car. As it turned out, the Luftwaffe pilots still shot down the truck. The car “crawled” to the village already on the lowered ramps.

In the village of Spokoynaya, a suitcase with jewelry passed from the hands of Avdeikina into the hands of Yakov Markovich Loboda, director of the local branch of the State Bank. They drew up an acceptance certificate and a new inventory; the old one remained with Avdeikina. Despite the fact that the adventures of the golden suitcase had already lasted almost a year, the valuable cargo continued to remain safe and sound.

On August 6, 1942, the Germans entered Spokoinaya. At this time, a convoy with refugees was leaving the village, among them was Yakov Markovich Loboda, who on a cart was carrying a suitcase with treasures and 40,000 rubles in cash, which he had taken from the bank. The convoy was intercepted by soldiers of the German army, but Yakov Loboda was lucky: the Nazis, inspired by the offensive, were unforgivably complacent. They did not shoot or arrest peaceful refugees. They quickly examined the carts, simple belongings, in which there was a dirty suitcase half covered with hay, which did not attract their attention.

It could not have occurred to the Wehrmacht soldiers that 80 kilograms of antique jewelry could be hidden in an old cart drawn by a frail peasant horse. Yakov Loboda did not return home. He turned off the dirt road and sent the horse and cart straight into the forest. As it turned out later, he expected to find partisans. Detachments in the Krasnodar Territory had been formed since the spring; as the Germans advanced, the men went into the forests, where bases with weapons and even food had already been prepared. According to the People's Commissariat of Defense, 89 partisan detachments operated in the region from 1942 to 1944. One of them, led by commander Sokolov, was formed from residents of Spokoinaya and its neighboring villages. The keeper of the golden suitcase, Yakov Loboda, was looking for him.

One of the certificates from the NKVD archives states: “The local partisan detachment was created on August 9, 1942. On August 27, Loboda Yakov Markovich handed over the valuables of the Kerch Museum for storage to the chief of supply of the detachment, Yakovlev. The valuables were handed over in the presence of the detachment commissar, Comrade. Malkova, and fully correspond to the original inventory.”

Yakov Markovich handed over the forty thousand rubles he had taken from the bank, and he himself remained in the detachment as an ordinary soldier. The burden of responsibility fell from the shoulders of the bank employee. In enemy-occupied territory, a partisan detachment in the forest was the best protection for jewelry. But then they disappeared, and under strange circumstances.

In 1944, the Germans were expelled from the Caucasus. Immediately after the liberation, NKVD officers arrived in Spokoinaya. They were tasked with picking up a suitcase with jewelry from the former leadership of the detachment. It was then that it turned out that none of them had a suitcase. He disappeared. This surprised and puzzled the special officials, while in Moscow they were confident that the treasures were completely safe. A special expedition was sent to the location of the partisan detachment, which found a large black suitcase matching the description in one of the dugouts. This was immediately reported to Moscow. The report was short, dry and not at all joyful. The suitcase was empty.

An investigation was immediately launched. They interrogated not only the former commanders, but also all the fighters of the detachment. It seemed that the authorities wanted to know everything about the partisan detachment. From the first minute of its existence to the last. On paper it turned out that the detachment existed long before the Germans arrived. According to the plan, when the enemy appeared, the partisans gathered at a designated place in the forest and then moved to the place of their permanent deployment. Yakov Loboda, who was then fleeing from the Germans with a golden suitcase, made it in the nick of time. Soon after this, the partisans moved out and seventeen days later they approached the foot of Mount Beden. As the NKVD officers found out, by this time the golden suitcase was already empty.

Version two
Enrichment the guerrilla style

We were able to familiarize ourselves with copies of the interrogations conducted by special officers. It turned out that the suitcase had disappeared along the route of the detachment and soon, during a halt, it was accidentally discovered near the forest. From the testimony of a partisan of the detachment, Kvasin, it is clear: “A fighter named Magdychev went down to a stream in the lowland, who drove oxen to a watering hole, pulling carts with belongings. It was he who discovered the suitcase. In his own words, he was lying on the ground already open, with some shiny objects lying nearby. Magdychev picked up one of them and secretly carried it into the detachment. I hid it from prying eyes for some time, but then I couldn’t resist and showed it to my comrades.”

The detachment commander Sokolov became aware of this. Partisan Magdychev was searched and a snake with a golden sheen was seized. It turned out that by this time many of the partisans had already descended into the ravine, to the place where the suitcase lay. Everyone unanimously claimed that there was no gold inside the suitcase, but there were several yellow shiny objects in the stream. They became the prey of the fighters. An atmosphere of suspicion arose in the detachment, but, as we learned from investigative documents, for some reason the detachment commander Sokolov did not begin to search his soldiers. Magdychev, without even being interrogated on the merits of the case, suffered some minor punishment and soon died in the first battle with the Nazis. None of the NKVD investigators found out how many jewelry there were when the suitcase was torn apart by the stream. Why did commander Sokolov forbid the search of the soldiers, only giving the order to take the suitcase back to the convoy? Where did the treasures go?

The investigators, one after another, summoned the residents of the village. Everyone was advised to keep their mouths shut and observe the secrecy of the interrogation. During the investigation, some of the partisans confirmed that they had indeed found and kept unusual things with them, but they did not attach much importance to them and treated them as trinkets. For this reason, all the items then disappeared somewhere.

From the testimony of the detachment nurse M. Shulzhenko: “I just found a gilded cross covered with red copper. I don’t remember now where he went.” And here is the testimony of soldier N. Sysoev: “In September 1942, I found two old small coins. I carried them in my pocket for a long time, and then lost them somewhere.” As a result, the fate of several small items was clarified. After the search, Magdychev’s golden snake ended up with the detachment commander, but no one saw it again. The cross that nurse Shulzhenko spoke about was lost somewhere. Two small coins found by the fighter Sysoev disappeared unnoticed by him.

But where did the rest of the artifacts go from the suitcase weighing more than eighty kilos? Seven hundred titles! Were they really plundered by partisans, but they only admitted to small finds?

Partisan Magdychev Grigory Ivanovich claimed that he found the suitcase already empty. What if he was telling the truth? Could one of the fighters, taking advantage of the turmoil, quietly hide most of the treasures somewhere? And when you hear the tramp of oxen driven by Magdychev, throw your suitcase and then quietly return to the detachment? Gradually, NKVD investigators reached the partisan Irina Gulnitskaya. She was in the detachment as treasurer. According to the investigation, she left the detachment without permission even before the end of hostilities. She had thirty thousand rubles and a small box with her. However, neither money nor boxes were found on Gulnitskaya during the investigation. But they found two unusual coins on her. The expert commission found that the coins are ancient and may well belong to the Kerch treasure. Gulnitskaya did not argue with this, but claimed that she found the coins in the forest. The secret of the suitcase was also unknown to her, like everyone else. In her opinion, the command of the detachment had a hand in the disappearance of the treasures.

So, we have established that the suitcase with treasures did not drown, that it was not lost in the turmoil of the retreat from Krasnodar, that it was not killed by an air bomb in Armavir, that it was not captured by the Germans who stopped the convoy. Now all the vicissitudes with the suitcase took place in a separate partisan detachment, where it was handed over by banker Yakov Loboda by order of the authorities for safekeeping. We once again turned to the investigative documents and discovered an interesting detail. The soldiers called the objects they picked up near the open suitcase nothing more than “strange bronze-colored things with multi-colored pieces of glass.” In life, these were ordinary peasants, simple and poorly educated people, who did not understand what treasures they had in their hands. And the leadership of the detachment consisted of enlightened people, party functionaries, Soviet workers, and officers. They understood what was in the suitcase, but at the same time they were sure that ordinary partisans had no idea about the secret of the black suitcase.

Indeed, only one of the commanders could take the suitcase without a shadow of suspicion. Taking advantage of the turmoil, he could hide the treasures, for example, in a bag, and throw the suitcase so that it would definitely be found, even deliberately leaving some gold there.

Then something incredible begins. Documents from the archives of the state security agencies read like a play written for the theater of the absurd. It is clear from them: “On March 18, 1943, the former commissar of the partisan detachment I. Malkov and the deputy chief of supply M. Fedorov draw up an act in which they testify: all the valuables of the State Bank branch, including a suitcase and 40,000 rubles, were burned in the forest due to the impossibility of their evacuation.” .

The fictitiousness of this act was discovered very soon, immediately after liberation. The partisan supply officer Fedorov and the detachment commissar Malkov were caught trying to exchange a large sum of money at the bank. Allegedly, the bills are wet, have become unusable and need to be replaced with normal ones. Malkov, by the way, already held the post of secretary of the district party committee. It turned out that this money was the same one that Loboda deposited with the detachment along with his suitcase, and which was then allegedly burned along with the jewelry. The act of burning eighty kilograms of metal is absurd by definition. Of course, in the fire of even a small forest fire you can burn banknotes or ruin the appearance of jewelry, but for 80 kilos of gold to be destroyed or simply evaporate is already in the realm of fantasy.

Perhaps they meant burning only the suitcase, and not its contents? But, firstly, the suitcase was intact, and secondly, where did the treasures themselves go? The commanders were unable to quietly stuff 719 beautiful trinkets into their pockets - there were too many items. So, there was only one thing left: to hide the jewelry in the forest until better times, and then drag them somewhere closer to civilization, for example, to your own cellar. What if treasures are still lying under someone's floor? Frightened by the investigation, unable to sell the treasures in their country, the thieves could remain silent about it for decades and ultimately take this secret with them to the grave, never waiting for better times.

Suddenly, completely unexpectedly, a topic developed that had already appeared in our investigation, but for some time remained outside the scope of the search. In the archives of the NKVD we found a protocol for the interrogation of partisan Potresov. He recalled a special Sonderkommando that hunted for treasures. Potresov said that in the fall of 1942, Sokolov’s detachment constantly participated in battles with the Nazis. Moreover, the Germans did not particularly disturb the neighboring partisans, but there was a real hunt for the partisan detachment from Spokoinaya. Scouts from among local residents reported that this hunt was being carried out by the SS Sonderkommando, which was assisted by additional Wehrmacht forces. The SS men were stationed in Spokoinaya, they also included civilians who seemed to be archaeologists, and they were looking for a suitcase with gold. This Sonderkommando suddenly disappeared from the vicinity of Spokoinaya, as if they had found what they were looking for and gone home.

Version three
Treasures in Germany

Studying the activities of the Sonderkommando, we asked the question, how did the Germans know about the contents of the golden suitcase? And they found the answer. Among the documents of the Kerch German administration, a copy of the inventory of the suitcase was discovered. But how did she get here? After all, it was compiled secretly in the presence of high-ranking party officials. Or maybe there was a traitor among our people, and the Nazis were tracking the movement of the suitcase from the very beginning? In this light, the crossing of treasures from Kerch to Taman appears in a new way. Let us remember that the plane circled over the boat for a long time and never opened fire, although all the ships in those days were mercilessly attacked by German aircraft. Why didn't the plane fire at the boat? Maybe he was just keeping an eye on him?

The Nazis deliberately hunted for jewelry from the Kerch collection. This is indicated by Karl Lemke’s visit to the museum before the war, and by all subsequent events. As is known, the Sonderkommando acted on the personal instructions of Heinrich Himmler, and the fact that there were scientists in the fascist detachment emphasizes the seriousness of this mission. There is reason to believe that the ancient treasures have long attracted the attention of the Ahnenerbe, an organization studying ancient Germanic culture and the heritage of their ancestors, which was supervised by Himmler himself. The purpose of the organization is to substantiate racial theory from a strictly scientific position, to obtain evidence of the former greatness and superiority of the Indo-Germanic Nordic race. In various parts of the world - in Tibet, the Middle East, Scandinavia - German scientists carried out excavations. In their opinion, the treasures discovered in Crimea could belong to the legendary Gothic queen Fidea, and therefore, of course, belonged to the German heritage.

It is believed that the Goths were one of the main Germanic tribes, and the fact that already 2000 years ago their ancestors could have developed a developed Germanic culture on the Black Sea made them great and ancient. The treasure found near Kerch was a rich Gothic burial. German museums did not have practically a single thing that belonged to the eastern, Ostrogothic culture. For this reason, the search for Kerch relics was given special importance. The value of the Gothic treasure for the Germans was not just high, because these treasures could become an important confirmation of the highest destiny of the Aryan race. The mystery remains that these searches stopped overnight. At the end of November 1942, the Sonderkommando disappeared from the village of Spokoina. There may be two reasons. Either the Germans found out that there were no more treasures in the detachment and there was nothing to look for, or they themselves took possession of these valuables.

However, over time, we came to the unexpected conclusion that the Germans did not get the decorations of the Goths. An indirect confirmation of this is that throughout the post-war decades, items from the black suitcase have never appeared in any collection or at any auction in the world. Then we outlined the entire circle of organizations and interested parties that could be involved in the disappearance of the treasures, and suddenly we discovered that the strangest thing in this story was how the NKVD officers behaved.

Version four
Extraction NKVD

The security officers could well have stolen the jewelry. There is no direct evidence of this, but the investigation was conducted in a very strange manner, very uncharacteristic for this organization. Commissioner Ivan Malkov, who got burned while exchanging stolen money, was merely removed from the post of first secretary of the district committee. The treasurer of the detachment, Irina Gulnitskaya, accused of treason, served three months in prison and was released. For that harsh period in the country's history, such punishments seem ridiculous. But everything falls into place if we assume: the security officers secretly remove the treasures, carefully close the case, and all the culprits are punished. The gold is handed over to Gokhran and used for secret operations of the Soviet government.

Most of our versions have a right to exist. But, unfortunately, none of them answers the question: where is the missing gold now? And then we get our hands on a letter from the former chief of staff of the partisan detachment, Komov, which puts a lot of things in their place. The chief of staff reports how for some reason he and the banker Yakov Loboda buried boxes of ammunition in the forest: “Among the boxes, it seems, there was a suitcase that Loboda brought. I don't remember the exact place. They were buried somewhere near the village, but this place was marked on the map by commander Sokolov.” The commander of the partisan detachment, Sokolov, soon died in battle, and the map itself disappeared. By December 1942, the detachment's situation became extremely difficult. Frost set in and, on top of everything else, the Germans finally managed to surround the partisans.

So, let's summarize. The treasures did not drown in the sea. They were not taken to Germany. They were not melted down into scrap gold. They were not plundered by the partisans. The security officers didn't take me away. Apparently, the treasure still lies somewhere in the ground.

P.S.: In the summer of 1946, local boys found an oval-shaped gold buckle in the forest, a buckle from a gold suitcase... Whether all the treasures will be found is a matter of time. Having provided the specialists with an inventory, we made a request about the value of the jewelry, and we recently received an answer. The treasures of Queen Fideya are valued at more than twenty million dollars. But there is also cultural and historical value of this collection.

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“Once in one of the newspapers I read an article about valuable relics of the Kerch Museum that disappeared during the war. It would be interesting to know whether their search continues, whether it has brought anything new over the past time?..”
E. Sokolovskaya, Kyiv

In January 1926, a peasant from the village of Marfovka, S. Neshev, on the ridge of Asandrova Val, where he was quarrying building stone, came across a rich Gothic burial and donated the things found there to the Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum: a golden diadem decorated with carnelians and garnet seeds, a large gold buckle, ear hangers, thin, oval-shaped gold buckles. Such an abundance of excellent, high artistic quality Gothic monuments dating from the 3rd to 5th centuries AD has not been found here. The sensational discovery was like an unexpected gift for the museum’s centennial anniversary...

And twenty years later, in the summer of 1946, hundreds of kilometers from Kerch, near the village of Spokoinaya, in the southeast of the Krasnodar Territory, the boys found an ancient oval-shaped gold buckle in the forest and took it to the police. The jewelry was later handed over to the local branch of the State Bank, but, unfortunately, it is impossible to establish its further fate today.

What, you say, is the connection between these events that are so different in time and distant from each other? The fact is that the gold buckle, accidentally discovered in the forest, was, apparently, from the same famous Marfovsky treasure! Why I say “apparently” will become clear from the following story...

But if this is so, then how did the Gothic relic end up so far from its location? How did she get there? This is a complex, intricate story that I have been dealing with for several years now...

Having once arrived in Kerch, I could not help but visit the historical and archaeological museum. There I heard about the disappearance of many museum treasures during the war. But they talked about it in a general, almost legendary form... And suddenly such a fortunate coincidence should happen! Just during my stay in Kerch, the museum received previously unknown documents both about the removal of some of its exhibits to the rear, and about the plunder of the remaining ones by the fascist occupiers. I was given the opportunity to get acquainted with the documents. From these papers, from which I first learned about the “golden suitcase,” a long search began.

So, the “golden suitcase”. It appeared in September 1941, when German tanks were already making their way into Crimea. Then the director of the museum (since 1921), a prominent archaeologist Yuliy Yulievich Marti, brought from home a large plywood suitcase, upholstered in black leatherette. And there, in fifteen boxes, they put the most valuable, or rather priceless, stored in the “special fund” and included in the country’s gold reserves. The suitcase was listed in the inventory as “place number 15.” In total, nineteen boxes were prepared for evacuation; the most significant exhibits, the museum archive, materials from excavations and the most important scientific research (from 1833 to 1941) were packed in them. The suitcase was treated in a special way: it was packed not only in the presence of the director and chief custodian, but also representatives of the city party committee and the city executive committee. They locked it, tied it with belts and sealed it with the wax seal of the Kerch City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

What was in the suitcase? First of all, the items of the Marfovsky treasure. Then seventy silver Pontic and Bosporan coins of the Mithridatic period, that is, the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, from the very interesting, according to scientists, almost unstudied Tiritak treasure, discovered during excavations at the end of 1935. Next gold plaques depicting Scythians drinking wine from a horn; plaques discovered on Mount Mithridates while digging a foundation pit: one with the image of a young man holding a horse, the other with the image of the sphinx; a collection of seventeen medieval buckles; all kinds of bracelets, earrings, rings, rings, pendants with images of a griffin, sphinxes, a lion, medallions with images of Aphrodite and Eros, masks, gold beads, belts made of silver plates, gold needles and petals. Finally, Panticapaean pure gold coins, gold Bosporan coins of Greek and Roman times, Genoese, Byzantine, Turkish, Russian coins, medals, ancient icons and much more.

Items in the amount of seven hundred and nineteen pieces made of gold and silver. All are unique monuments of world culture. The suitcase was rightly called “golden”!

On September 26, Yuliy Yulievich Marti and the instructor of the city party committee (according to other sources, an employee of the city executive committee) F. T. Ivanenkova left Kerch and went with museum boxes to the rear. The trip was extremely difficult. First, by boat through the troubled Kerch Strait. In Taman, the boxes were loaded onto army vehicles. The road passed through open steppe terrain, clearly visible from airplanes. During raids, they jumped out of trucks and hid wherever they could. Marty and Ivanenkova got to the shelter later than everyone else when bombs were exploding all around: they had to drag a heavy and uncomfortable suitcase with them. He was always with them - after all, they were obliged to save “place number 15” under any, even the most extreme circumstances.

We reached Krasnodar. The boxes were placed in a local museum. What happened to them after? Of course, I was primarily interested in the fate of the “golden suitcase.” In Krasnodar, where I tried to figure this out, they only told me, and then with reference to vague and contradictory rumors, that the fascists who occupied the city were intensively looking for some Crimean treasures. A special Sonderkommando was equipped, which included archaeologists who arrived from Berlin. But the Nazis, again according to rumors, found nothing, because they managed to send these “countless riches” from Krasnodar. Where? It seems to be in Armavir. It is possible that to some other city...

The failure of the trip to Krasnodar, on which I had high hopes, was upsetting. But why the failure? Even the fact that I heard about some Sonderkommando with Berlin archaeologists (?) looking for Crimean treasures (and not a “golden suitcase”?) information is clearly worthy of attention. They could come in handy and, as it turned out later, they did!

Returned to Moscow. Stuck in the archives. It is impossible that no documentary evidence remains of the evacuation of such a large museum... And I was lucky! In the State Archives of the RSFSR, I first came across a mention that the Kerch exhibits were indeed transported to Armavir. And then the fact that the “golden suitcase” was delivered to Armavir by Ivanenkova. One Ivanenkova. Marty, an elderly and sick man, could not bear the hardships of the hectic journey and spent a long time in the Krasnodar hospital.

I must admit with disappointment that efforts to find out anything about Ivanenkova were in vain. Thus, the first secretary of the Kerch city party committee in 1941, Naum Abramovich Sirota, to whom I turned, replied that he did not remember such an instructor, saying, however, “so many years have passed!” Lists of pre-war employees of the City Executive Committee have not been preserved. And in the party archive of the Crimean regional committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine nothing pleased me either. But Ivanenkova would have told so much about the adventures of the “golden suitcase”...

Perhaps these lines will be read by people who know or knew her. Please respond then!

Ivanenkova handed over her valuables to the Armavir City Executive Committee, which was reported to the People's Commissariat for Education by the leaders of the Krasnodar regional district, Pashkova and Markova, in February 1942.

The fate of the remaining eighteen boxes with Kerch exhibits was tragic. When Armavir began to be bombed by fascist aircraft, a landmine hit the building where they were located, and everything died under the ruins in a fire.

Only the “golden suitcase” survived. In Armavir, the first secretary of the city party committee, L. M. Krivenko, and the chairman of the city executive committee, V. P. Malykh, could have known about its further vicissitudes, according to meager archival bits. They also led the partisan movement in the area during the fascist invasion. I am sending a request to Armavir. And I receive (how many times already!) a disappointing certificate: Krivenko and Malykh died long ago, and there are no official documents about the “golden suitcase”. It seems that traces of the Kerch treasures were hopelessly lost...

What to do? After a small publication in the newspaper “Soviet Culture” asking people who knew anything about the “golden suitcase” to respond, I managed to move forward in my search. The story of the missing Kerch gold attracted the attention of local newspapers, Krasnodar local historians, historians, and journalists. There were a lot of responses. But for the most part, what people reported was based on rumors, legends and oral traditions.

One day, among this mail, I came across that one, long-awaited and yet unexpected letter that you dream about and sometimes don’t believe in. A letter from a man in whose biography the “golden suitcase” became a dramatic and, perhaps, most memorable event. The letter was sent from Armavir by Anna Moiseevna Avdeikina, who in 1941-1942 worked in the Armavir City Executive Committee. It was she who accepted her secret cargo from Ivanenkova.

I write to her immediately. I receive a detailed answer, again and again... Soon I arrive in Armavir and meet with Avdeikina in her tiny house.

The “Golden Suitcase” was brought by a woman I don’t know and, as far as I remember, an elderly man, says Avdeikina. I forgot his last name. But he is not ours, not Armavir. The chairman of the city executive committee, Vasily Petrovich Malykh, ordered that the contents of the suitcase be checked against the submitted inventory. It was opened in the presence of a special commission, which included me. Everything came together exactly.

The suitcase was locked and sealed with wax. This time from the Armavir City Executive Committee. They took me to my room on the fourth floor of the House of Soviets. Particularly important documents were kept in it, and outsiders were prohibited from entering. Only a narrow circle of responsible workers knew about the existence of the “golden suitcase”.

Unfortunately for me, in the summer of 1942 I became seriously ill with typhus and pneumonia. She lay unconscious for a long time, then gradually began to come to her senses. I had a vague idea of ​​what was happening outside my room. But on the third of August, my worried mother told me that the Germans were very close and it seemed that the city had been evacuated. I got up, weak and weak. I went out into the street and was struck by the unusual, ominous desertion. Staggering, she wandered to the city executive committee. In the House of Soviets the doors are wide open, empty, no one! I realized that the city executive committee had evacuated. With difficulty I climbed to the fourth floor. More out of habit than with any specific purpose, she looked into her room. And immediately I saw this black suitcase! I couldn’t believe my eyes! But it was him.

How did they leave him?! Obviously, the one who collected papers and things to be exported here, in the haste and confusion, simply did not pay attention to the shabby and unsightly suitcase. After all, I repeat, only two or three people knew about its contents...

What to do? I can't carry my suitcase alone. Should I call someone for help? Whom? You can't trust a stranger. But don’t give the people’s property to the enemy!

I'm running home. I'm calling my nephew Shurik. Then he, a sickly teenager, was not even fourteen. I hurry: “Hurry, Shurik, hurry!” We had just climbed to the fourth floor of the House of Soviets when a terrible explosion shook the building. We fell to the floor. Glass and plaster fell on us. But they remained alive and unharmed. We were lucky - the bomb hit a neighboring house. We take the suitcase outside. We carry it together, rest after fifteen to twenty steps. After all, you can barely carry yourself! At that time I had about forty kilograms left in me, and I was not tall – one meter and fifty-three centimeters. And in this suitcase there were probably all eighty kilograms!

We walked three blocks. Then my sister Polina came running and helped us. Finally, our house on Lermontov Street, the same one in which we are talking now. We leave our heavy luggage in the yard, and I go look for a collection point. As I remember, it was prescribed even before my illness, near the meat processing plant. I’m making my way through the streets, thinking to myself: what if they’ve moved it or, worse, everyone has already left the city... But the assembly point was at the appointed place, and, to my joy, I see Malykh there. I blurt out to him about the suitcase and ask for a car. He promises. Almost exhausted, I wander back. We sit and wait. There is no car. I find myself at the assembly point again. They tell me that a passenger car was sent to us, which means it didn’t arrive...

Actually, there is nothing to be surprised about - the city is being mercilessly bombed. The earth is trembling, everything around has plunged into some kind of dusty twilight; the sun is not visible. I remember that about twenty minutes ago I was almost cut off by a piece of shrapnel. With a whistle, it flew in front of his face and crashed into the ground at his feet. The belated horror comes...

The little ones are picked up by a truck somewhere. We drag the suitcase into the back. Vasily Petrovich orders the driver to drive to the village of Spokoinaya. Other roads from the city were cut by the Nazis. And this path may be in the hands of the Nazis, but there is a chance to break through. And Malykh tells me, if we get to the village, to hand over my suitcase to the State Bank branch. I’m trying to ask to join the partisan detachment, but Vasily Petrovich refuses: “The most important thing is to save the valuables!” he inspires.

On the way we were fired upon and our tires were flattened. We somehow got to the village on the slopes. I handed over the suitcase to the director of the local branch of the State Bank.

What happened next? I joined the refugees. We were detained by German machine gunners and taken to some clearing to find out our identity. Several hundred people were gathered there. There, first of all, I got rid of the act of handing over the “golden suitcase”, tore it up and buried the pieces in the ground. I think: the Germans will still detain me when they see from my documents that I work in the city executive committee. She didn’t tempt fate and fled from the camp at night with several employees of Soviet institutions... She crossed the front line.

On February 4, 1943, a few days after the liberation of Armavir by Soviet troops, Anna Avdeikina returned home. Her relatives did not immediately recognize her as a thin, yellow, emaciated woman with gray hair, broken feet that bled, and in a torn, threadbare dress. Of the news that was shared with her, the main one related to... the “golden suitcase.”

As soon as the Germans occupied Armavir, the Gestapo came for Avdeikina. They searched the house, even bayoneted a haystack in the yard. They asked when and how she left the city, and who accompanied her. Especially what I took with me. They demanded to know where she hid the black suitcase that she took from the city executive committee. The Nazis quickly found out about him! Probably one of the traitors saw Avdeikina... The Gestapo realized what kind of suitcase they were informed about. After all, it was he who was being chased by a special Sonderkommando from Kerch itself. And, as we will see later, she also got to Spokoinaya...

So, the village of Spokoinaya (now it is part of the Otradnensky district) is the last known location of the Kerch treasures. Here, as well as in Otradnaya, I met with enthusiasts of the search for the “golden suitcase” - local historian Mikhail Nikolaevich Lozhkin, with whom I began a lively and very useful correspondence, and with an employee of the regional newspaper “Rural Life” Stanislav Kirillovich Filippov. I met with the head of the Glory room in the Spokoinensky House of Culture and the chairman of the veterans council, Ivan Denisovich Ermachenko, with some former partisans, looked through the archive of the partisan movement in the regional museum...

And of course, they showed me a one-story, barracks-type house, which in 1942 housed the Spokoinensky branch of the State Bank. Avdeikina brought a “golden suitcase” here, and from here it...

On August 6, the director of our State Bank, Yakov Markovich Loboda, loaded the bank valuables and this suitcase onto a chaise, reports former State Bank accountant Ekaterina Vasilievna Vasilchenko. And tried to evacuate them to the rear...

However, soon, according to her, he was stopped by the Germans. And if the Nazis had looked into the chaise, the sad and this time the final fate of the ancient gold would have been predetermined! But, fortunately, they did not check what the frightened and tired man was carrying, but sent the refugees, including Loboda, back to Spokoinaya. Loboda did not return to the village, but turned into the forest and delivered bank property to the Spokoinensky partisan detachment. There he remained as an ordinary soldier.

At the beginning of December 1942, the detachment found itself in an extremely difficult situation. Its food bases were destroyed and ammunition ran out. The soldiers were starving, suffering from disease and sudden frosts. The detachment was surrounded by punitive forces and suffered heavy losses. Therefore, his command decided to make their way out of the encirclement in small groups, partly scattering to their native villages in order to continue the underground struggle against the invaders.

Equipment, extra weapons, documents, and valuables were buried in different places. Only two or three people knew about each such cache. Who hid the “golden suitcase”? Unknown. Perhaps Yakov Markovich Loboda was among them. Most likely, these people died, just as Loboda died. When leaving the encirclement, he and several of his comrades were captured by the Nazis. On December 14 they were shot.

In prison, Yakov Markovich was beaten and interrogated about some valuables. Were the Nazis trying to find out the secret of the “golden suitcase”? They didn't get anything from him. And what he hid from the enemy, didn’t he want to reveal to his wife when she was allowed to say goodbye to him? He was trying to tell her something very important. “But we were given three minutes,” his widow Elena Pavlovna writes to me. “The policeman stood right there. What kind of conversation is there!” She only managed to understand that “in the detachment he handed over his valuables to Irina Andreevna Gulnitskaya...”.

Gulnitskaya?! I had already heard this name from former partisans; they said that Irina Andreevna was like a cashier for them. And she could well have been involved in the safety of Kerch gold. Therefore, won’t the thread of search stretch from her?

And so it happened, but much, much later...

In the meantime, I was looking for those few surviving partisans who would know the “final” part of the tragedy of the Kerch treasures. Again, inquiries, appeals to official institutions, correspondence... And among the contradictory stories, all sorts of judgments, assumptions, conjectures and legends with which the history of the “golden suitcase” is thoroughly entangled, I selected the most, as it seems to me, reliable facts.

They, these facts, showed that only five people in the detachment were aware of the suitcase, mostly from the leadership. Commissioner Ivan Andreevich Malkov knew about them. He, according to the deputy commissioner of the neighboring Upornensky detachment Vasily Stepanovich Serikov, mentioned the “golden suitcase” in a conversation with him. But he did not spread the word, which is now worth regretting, because Ivan Andreevich has already died. The commissar’s son, Viktor Ivanovich, who joined the detachment as a teenager, recalls “some big black suitcase. We had no idea what was in it. But they took care of him more than cartridges...”

Such eyewitnesses, undoubtedly knowledgeable in the special secrets of the detachment of eyewitnesses, are no longer alive, such as the head of the economic department Mikhail Ivanovich Fedorov, the special officer Nikolai Ivanovich Chernogolovy, Nadezhda Vasilievna Zakharchenko, an employee of one of the district party committees in Crimea... Gulnitskaya also died. But the thread that I connected with her name led to Gulnitskaya’s daughter. Larisa Aleksandrovna Molchanova, whom I found with great difficulty, was a fourteen-year-old girl with her mother in a partisan detachment. She said that indeed her mother had something to do with the “golden suitcase,” which “brought her a lot of grief and suffering.” But she didn’t tell her daughter about this even after the war. “If she were alive, I think she would help you.”

Larisa Alexandrovna suggested what else the chief of staff of the detachment, Komov, probably knew about the Kerch treasures. “But he’s probably been dead for a long time.” I began to make inquiries about his relatives and... found the very healthy seventy-six-year-old Mikhail Ivanovich Komov. I was glad to see him as my last real hope.

However, this hope turned into only a few lines from a difficult-to-read letter. Komov wrote that he and two now deceased partisans were burying boxes of ammunition. Among them, he said, “apparently, there was your suitcase...”. Komov does not remember the exact place where he was buried - “somewhere near the village of Besstrashnaya.” But the detachment commander Sokolov, as Mikhail Ivanovich can understand, has it marked on the map.

Where is this map now? Without a doubt, she died?! There were almost no people left alive in the detachment, and what can we say about a sheet of paper! Moreover, the commander of the Spokoinensky detachment, Pyotr Nikolaevich Sokolov, was killed in battle. Therefore, I had no doubt that none of his belongings or documents had survived. But one day I received a letter that excited me and, in fact, abruptly changed the direction of my search. What its author, Armavir resident A.T. Buryakovsky, said was confirmed by information from other sources.

And he informed that his recently deceased relative Alexandra Grigorievna Serdyukova fought in the Spokoinensky detachment. After it broke up, she and Malkov’s son Viktor made their way at night to her sister Praskovya, who lived on a farm near the village of Besstrashnaya. And most importantly, she brought documents of the deceased commander. Among them is his operational map. She hid them carefully. After the war, Alexandra Grigorievna handed over Sokolov’s belongings and papers to his wife, who came from Leningrad.

However, no one could tell me the address of Sokolov’s widow. But she possessed, perhaps, the only key to solving the mystery of the “golden suitcase” - a map on which her husband indicated the partisan hiding places, including the hiding place of the Kerch jewelry. Has the priceless map survived? How necessary it is now!

If, of course, the treasure remains in the partisan cache to this day...

Why did I doubt their integrity today? Let me remind you of the accidental discovery of an ancient buckle, presumably from the Marfovsky treasure, which was mentioned at the beginning of the essay. This suggests a lot of different hypotheses and guesses. But what is absolutely certain is that the Nazis did not get them!

I am also convinced that that long-standing discovery would have led back in 1946 to revealing the secret of the disappeared valuables, if specialists had immediately and seriously taken up this matter. True, the police linked the gold buckle found in the forest with the missing “golden suitcase.” They even showed it to someone to establish whether it belonged to the Kerch relics. Of course, the home-grown examination was not successful. Because only one person could identify the monument with complete authority: Yuliy Yulievich Marti, But it’s unlikely that anyone in Spokoinaya had heard of it. The time was post-war, difficult, people were overcome by other worries... And, of course, no one began to look for the former director of the museum.

Julius Yulievich himself grieved more about the loss of the archive and scientific research materials. In the same year, 1946, he wrote with bitterness to a friend, prominent Moscow scientist Lev Petrovich Kharko: “The riches that were found and preserved during my management of the Kerch Museum no longer exist! Diaries, notes and other scientific documents were apparently lost forever. And this is a terrible blow to my museum! Loss of all diaries irreparable damage!..”

Documents burned in the fire of war cannot be returned. But the search for Kerch relics must be continued. And, perhaps, with your help, dear readers, it will be possible, well, let’s say, not to discover them, but at least with a greater degree of probability to imagine the final fate of the “golden suitcase.”

Evgraf Konchin

Kerch Armavir Spokoinaya village

The Mystery of the Golden Suitcase is one of the most exciting mysteries in Russian history related to the search for treasures. And not at all because this treasure is of some gigantic magnitude, it has not happened at all. The suitcase in question contained only eighty kilograms of gold and silver, but these eighty kilograms meant much more to world historical science than all the treasures of Ali Baba.

In January 1926, a peasant from the village of Marfovka on the ridge of Asandrova Val, where he was quarrying building stone, came across a rich Gothic burial and donated the things found there to the Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum. Such an abundance of excellent, high artistic quality Gothic monuments dating from the 3rd to 5th centuries AD has not been found here. The sensational discovery was like an unexpected gift for the museum’s centennial anniversary. No one knew then that the further history of the treasures would turn into a real detective story.

In September 1941, rescuing the most important exhibits and documents from the Nazis, the director of the Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum Yu. Marta and the city committee instructor F. Ivanenkova took 19 boxes, including a suitcase with the museum’s gold reserves, to Armavir. However, in the summer of 1942, the war reached Kuban. All archival and other materials of the museum were destroyed by a direct bomb hit. But the “golden suitcase”, stored in the warehouse of the city health department, survived.

The Adventures of the Golden Suitcase

The Nazis were approaching the city, so it was decided to transport the “golden suitcase” to a more remote part of Kuban - to the village of Spokoinaya, where the valuables were transferred to the local branch of the State Bank. At the end of August, the manager of the Spokoinensky branch of the State Bank, Y. Loboda, deposited the “golden suitcase” at the headquarters of the Spokoinensky partisan detachment, created on August 9, 1942. At this point, all reliable information about the further fate of the treasures of the Kerch Museum ended. All that was known was that the “golden suitcase” had mysteriously disappeared without a trace. Today, having become acquainted with the testimonies of genuine eyewitnesses of those events, we have the opportunity to tell what happened next.

On August 27, Y. Loboda deposited the valuables of the Kerch Museum with the chief of supplies of the Spokoinensky detachment, I. Yakovlev. “Having accepted the money and valuables, Yakovlev put them in a chest. This chest was in the supply department, and he, Yakovlev, guarded it.” As it turned out, he even slept on this chest.

What valuables were in the “golden suitcase”?

From the official inventory of the items in the leather suitcase (box No. 15), it follows that they were neatly sorted into 15 boxes: Byzantine red gold coins; gold Bosporan coins from Greek and Roman times; gold pendants - in the form of a griffin, with images of Scythians on horseback and on foot, heads of bulls, a lion cub... In total, the “golden suitcase” contained about 800 objects, the world historical and artistic value of which simply cannot be measured by money...

So, the suitcase was placed in the chest on which the partisan Yakovlev slept. On September 13, the detachment began a hike from the Spokoinensky forests to the pass. On September 17, the partisans stopped at a parking lot to rebuild the carts. This is where the missing suitcase was discovered.

A stop to rebuild the carts took place at the foot of Mount Beden. The archival materials preserve the story of detachment soldier N. Chernogolovy about how the loss of the “golden suitcase” was discovered:

“... A former fighter of the detachment, Grigory Ivanovich Magdychev, at a halt under Mount Bolshoi Beden, drove a pair of oxen assigned to him into the ravine to water. And there, in the ditch, I found an open suitcase, empty, with the remains of some things that were of no value and whose names were unknown to anyone. So, for example, he brought a metal thing from the ditch - zigzag, bronze color, weighing 700-800 grams. And he showed it to one of the soldiers and said where he got it...” It reached Smirnov, the detachment commander, who ordered to search Magdychev and seize the “zigzag thing” from him. Smirnov did not allow other people to be searched, convincing everyone that Magdychev had stolen the suitcase with valuables. As N. Chernogolovy recalled, the investigation was over, and Smirnov hated Magdychev, creating unbearable conditions for him to stay in the detachment. Magdychev was later shot by the Nazis.

It is difficult to understand the hatred of Smirnov, who actually should have conducted a normal investigation in the detachment. After all, items from the “golden suitcase” literally flashed into the hands of the partisans. Here are just some of the evidence collected mainly in 1944.

M. Shulzhenko, nurse of the partisan detachment: “...Around September 17, 1942, we saw that there were many labels of some historical museum lying along the road. We assumed that it had been evacuated and that valuables were broken, but we did not find them. I just found a gilded cross covered with red copper, and in the middle there was glass... I don’t remember now where it went.”

Soldier N. Sysoev: “In September 1942, while repairing a cart, I found two small coins from historical times. One coin has a head engraved on it... I carried them in my pocket for a long time, and then lost them somewhere.”

It should be said frankly, without disturbing the memory of the fallen and the memory of the surviving partisans of the Spokoinensky detachment, the vast majority (there were 110 people in the detachment) who went into the forests to fight and not sit out, that the cause of many of their troubles was that they were taken to command local party and Soviet “princelings” who thought only of themselves. On March 18, 1943, when the Germans had already been expelled, the former commissar of the partisan detachment, and now the 1st secretary of the Spokoinensky RKVKP(b) I. Malkov and the former deputy chief of supply of the detachment, who became the chairman of the Spokoinensky district executive committee, M. Fedorov, left a unique act. In it, they testified as eyewitnesses that all the valuables and documents of the State Bank branch, including the “golden suitcase” and 40 thousand rubles, were burned in the forest “due to the impossibility of evacuating... because the route was cut off by enemy troops.”

The investigation of this and other facts began only in September 1943. Quite quickly it became clear that the act was fictitious. Thus, one of the eyewitnesses testified that during the dissolution of the detachment, only bank documents and stamps were burned, but the “golden suitcase” and money were not destroyed. In July 1943, Fedorov turned to the chief accountant of the State Bank branch with a request to replace a large amount of money that allegedly got wet in his pocket and became unusable. During the exchange, it turned out that this money was from the same 40,000 rubles that were deposited with the detachment and then “burned”...

The beginning of the interest of state security agencies in the “golden suitcase” can be considered September 1943, when the former cashier of the partisan detachment I. Gulnitskaya, born in 1905, was “developed.” However, this interest was indirect. Gulnitskaya was primarily suspected of treason and complicity with the occupiers. On March 29, 1944, she was arrested, but on October 30 of the same year she was released from custody, since the accusation was not proven.

A little about the fate of other partisans. N. Smirnov was caught by the police and shot. I. Yakovlev and Y. Loboda died at the hands of the fascists, and many of the detachment’s partisans also died. I. Malkov was removed from the post of 1st Secretary of the Spokoinensky RK of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and later worked as the director of a pig-breeding state farm in the Leningrad region of Kuban. M. Fedorov, most likely, was also removed from his post, but it was not possible to find out what happened to him next...

On January 2, 1944, inspector A. Shcherbatyuk addressed the People's Commissar of Education of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Gavrilenko with a note in which he complained about the passivity of the Kuban residents in the search for missing museum valuables. “The Chairman of the Armediary District Executive Committee, Comrade Malykh, is very biased about this whole story with the suitcase, he, for example, tried to convince me that this is a trifle, you have lost the whole of Crimea. I have Armavir, and you will fool your head and look for some suitcase...” Nevertheless, some efforts were still made to search for the missing treasures following fresh tracks. The Kuban state security authorities sent out information sheets to a number of regions with copies of an inventory of the contents of the “golden suitcase.”

However, neither in those days, nor in all the past years, not a single item from the treasures of the Kerch Museum “flickered” either in our country or abroad. The historical and artistic value of these rarities is so obvious and has been described many times in the world that complete “silence” leaves hope - the main part of the contents of the “golden suitcase” is still hidden somewhere...

From the entire suitcase, only 2 coins remained, found during a search at Gulnitskaya’s place. The expert commission found that both coins were minted in the ancient city of Panticapaeum (located on the site of present-day Kerch) and could belong to the Kerch Museum. According to Gulnitskaya, the values ​​of the Kerch Museum were stolen by the command of the Spokoinensky partisan detachment. Indeed, the entire set of facts clearly indicates that the “golden suitcase” was actually looted by the partisan detachment itself. The robber or robbers probably buried the bulk of the stolen goods in the forest (it was dangerous to continue the march in a detachment with valuables) somewhere near Mount Beden, hoping to return for the treasures. But subsequently the thief or thieves may have been killed or arrested and were never able to return for the stolen goods...

Some current events also speak in favor of this version of the development of circumstances.

Several years ago, the head of the Krasnodar geophysical expedition N.M. learned about this secret. Tsypchenko. He went to the site of the then events - now it is the Otradnensky district of the Krasnodar Territory. Those places are quite remote, but, according to Tsypchenko, he was able to approximately determine the place where, perhaps, the bulk of the treasures of the “golden suitcase” are buried. However, for further searches using special equipment that Tsypchenko does not have, funds are needed.

Other directions of possible search are also known. Nikolai Panchishkin, the head of the public relations group of the FSB department for the Krasnodar Territory, who helped me in working with archival materials, told the following story: in 1991, the KGB department for the Krasnodar Territory received information that the children of a commissar of one of the partisan detachments might be living in St. Petersburg Armavir bush Nikolai Petrovich Sokolov, who died in battle while leaving the encirclement. After the war, Sokolov’s widow (her name is unknown) came from Leningrad with two sons, one of whom is named Victor, to the place of her husband’s death. The widow was given the deceased's belongings, among which was a map with marks of partisan hiding bases.

Alas, the response from St. Petersburg reported that, according to the central address bureau, Nikolai Petrovich Sokolov or Viktor Nikolaevich Sokolov are not registered or have left the city. Most likely, the names reported from Krasnodar turned out to be inaccurate. In 1991, Sokolov’s sons were approximately 60 years old. Perhaps, after this publication, one of them or other relatives who know something about the map will respond. After all, be that as it may, we cannot exclude the possibility that the main part of the “golden suitcase” nevertheless ended up in one of the partisan caches.

Documents burned in the fire of war cannot be returned. But the search for Kerch relics must be continued. And, perhaps, with your help, dear readers, it will be possible, well, let’s say, not to discover them, but at least with a greater degree of probability to imagine the final fate of the “golden suitcase”.

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Kuban often associated with the search for treasures. One of the stories tells about the famous missing gold suitcase, and the traces of this riddle lead to Armavir. This is a story published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

"Priceless treasures - gold of the Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum was in this black suitcase. It disappeared under mysterious circumstances during the last war. But his search continues to this day...

In January 1926 peasant Crimean village of Marfovka Nashev found it in the open mounds rich treasure- burial of the Gothic king, dating back to the 3rd-5th centuries: a golden diadem decorated with carnelians and pomegranate seeds, several gold buckles and ear pendants. Such excellent, high artistic quality Gothic monuments have never been found. They were transferred to the Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum and received the name " Marfovsky treasure". He entered an important part with the museum's famous gold collection.

Yes, yes, she was really famous, of universally recognized importance, included in all special reference books and catalogs. It consisted of 719 gold and silver items. Among them are seventy Pontic and Bosporan coins Mithridatian time, that is, 2nd-1st centuries BC, the Tiritakovsky treasure, discovered during excavations at the end of 1935. Gold coins were especially famous plaques with images of Scythians drinking wine from a horn, plaques with the image of a young man holding a horse, as well as with the image of the sphinx, medallions with images Aphrodite and Eros, gold masks, beads, belts made of gold and silver plates, gold needles and petals. The collection of medieval buckles consisting of seventeen items, a collection of all kinds of bracelets, earrings, rings, rings, pendants with images of griffins, sphinxes and lions. Finally, it contained Panticapaean coins of red gold, gold Bosporan, Greek, Roman Genoese, Byzantine, Turkish, Russian coins, medals, ancient icons in gold frames decorated with precious stones, and much more. In a word, they were priceless monuments of world culture.

The war turned into a terrible tragedy for the collection. When the Nazis broke into Crimea in the fall of 1941, the most significant exhibits were packed into 19 boxes and prepared for evacuation. The gold collection was placed in a large plywood suitcase, upholstered in black dermantine. In the inventory it was listed as "location #15". But most often, even in official documents, it was called " golden suitcase". They treated it with particular care. All items were placed in it not only in the presence of the director of the museum, the outstanding archaeologist Yuli Yulievich Marti, and the chief curator, but also in the presence of the chairman of the city council and the secretary of the city party committee. The suitcase was locked and tied with a belt , sealed with the wax seal of the Kerch City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

On September 26, 1941, Marty and the instructor of the city party committee, Ivanenko, set off with the museum cargo to the deep rear, on a distant and dangerous journey that turned out to be irrevocable, tragic, and in many ways still mysterious. In the mid-seventies, in search of a “golden suitcase”, I also made the same journey from Kerch...

But let's go back to September '41. First, the boxes were transported by boat across Kerch Strait. They were not bombed, which was considered a good omen. IN Taman The boxes were loaded onto trucks. The road passed through open terrain, which was clearly visible by fascist planes. During raids, they jumped out of their cars and hid wherever they could. Marty and Ivanenko had the hardest time of all, as they were carrying a heavy suitcase. He should always be with them under any, even the most extreme circumstances. Even at the cost of their own lives, they were obliged to save it.

So we got to Krasnodar and then moved to Armavir. Here Marty and Ivanenko handed over their cargo. Their dangerous mission was over, and they moved further to the rear. But they hardly imagined that for “place #15” the worst was yet to come. It is unlikely that the leaders of the Krasnodar Regional Executive Committee, Pashkova and Markov, were aware of this, and they telegraphed to Moscow, to the People's Commissariat for Education, about the safe evacuation of the valuables of the Kerch Museum. Who could have known then that the fascist invasion would reach the Krasnodar region...

Soon the bombing began Armavir. During the next raid, a high-explosive bomb hit the building where the boxes with Kerch exhibits were located, and they all died under the ruins and in the fire. And the "golden suitcase"? For a long time I thought so too.

However, after a long search in the archives, lengthy correspondence, inquiries, which took several months, I managed to contact the person from whom I learned the further fate of the Kerch gold. They were Anna Moiseevna Avdeikina. Met her at Armavir, in her tiny house. In 1941-1942, she was in charge of the so-called special unit of the city executive committee. This is where Marty and Ivanenko were brought" golden suitcase".

The chairman of the city executive committee, Vasily Petrovich Malykh, ordered to open the suitcase, - said Anna Moiseevna, - to check its contents with the presented inventory. Everything came together exactly. Then the suitcase was closed and the Armavir City Executive Committee stamped. He was left for preservation in the “special unit”, which is why he survived the bombing.

In the summer of '42, I became very ill - typhus and pneumonia. My mother barely left me. I got out of bed weak and weak. But on August 3, my worried mother told me that the Germans were very close and it looked like they were leaving our city. I decided to go to the House of Soviets, where my “special unit” was located. The building greeted me with open doors and complete desertion. Everyone has already left. With difficulty I climbed to the fourth floor, entered my room and... immediately saw that same suitcase! I couldn’t believe my eyes! But it was him. In the chaos they simply forgot about him.

What to do? I couldn’t carry the suitcase alone - after all, it contained eighty kilograms. I’m returning home and asking my sister Polina and nephew Shura to help. The three of us drag a heavy suitcase along the deserted streets. The bombing began - explosions, fires, pieces of brick and glass fragments flying. Still, they brought him home. What's next? I remember that they told me a place to evacuate “just in case.” I'm running there. Thank God, I see a completely exhausted Malykh. He wanted to brush me off, but when he found out about the suitcase, even his face changed. He immediately sent a truck after him, ordered him to go as fast as he could to the village of Spokoinaya and hand him over there. to the head of the State Bank Yakov Markovich Loboda.

On the way, we were fired at from a maize machine. The tires were flattened. Somehow we got to the village on the slopes. I gave the suitcase to Loboda, and I decided to make my way to my people. But she was detained by a fascist patrol and taken to a camp for identity verification. I understood that if the Germans found out that she was the head of the “special unit”... In a word, she escaped from the camp and crossed the front line with many adventures.

After release Armavir Anna Moiseevna returned home from the invaders in February 1943. She learned from her mother that the Gestapo came for her, asked about... the suitcase, and demanded to know where it was hidden. It seems that someone saw Avdeikina with him and reported it to the Germans. The Gestapo searched the house, even bayoneted the haystacks in the yard.

Anna Moiseevna did not know then that for this suitcase there was a special order from Kerch itself. Sonderkommando, which included Berlin archaeologists. They had a complete inventory of the contents of the “golden suitcase”, which was given to them by a traitor - an employee of the Kerch museum.

By the way, I found a copy of it in the files of the German city administration, which they kindly showed me at the Kerch KGB. The Sonderkommando reached Calm. Thirty years later I also visited the village. I asked old-timers and museum workers. Local historian Mikhail Nikolaevich Lozhkin especially helped me - many thanks to him. Here's what I learned.

On August 6, 1942, Loboda loaded the suitcase onto the chaise, covered it with various household belongings, and began to make his way to the rear. But he ran into the Nazis. The soldiers, however, did not check what the tired, unshaven and frightened man was carrying, and sent him back to the village. Yakov Moiseevich turned into the forest and reached the partisans. He remained there as an ordinary soldier.

In December forty-two Spokoinensky partisan detachment found himself in an extremely difficult situation. Its food bases were plundered by the Nazis, food and ammunition ran out. The soldiers were starving, suffering from disease and severe frosts. The detachment was surrounded by punitive forces, and it suffered serious losses. Therefore, his command decided to break out of the encirclement in small groups, some of them scattering to nearby villages.

Equipment, extra weapons, documents were buried in different places. About everyone cache knew two or three people. All of them were indicated in the card of the detachment commander, Yakov Grigorievich Sokolov. But after his death, she disappeared under unclear and very mysterious circumstances. The surviving partisans told me that the suitcase was hidden by Sokolov and Loboda. When leaving the encirclement, Yakov Markovich and several of his comrades were captured by the Nazis. On December 14 they were shot.

Before the execution, they were allowed to say goodbye to their wife Elena Pavlovna. “He kept trying to tell me something,” she recalls. - Well, what kind of conversation is there! A policeman stood nearby, hurried, and cursed. I only managed to whisper about some hidden suitcase... but I was almost unconscious from horror and grief, by God, I didn’t care about any suitcase. Only later was everyone surprised that he was given this suitcase?!

It was given, and probably Yakov Markovich told his wife where it was hidden. But Elena Pavlovna has forgotten everything, and one can understand her.

So, now no one can say anything about " gold suitcase"We can only hope for an archival document. For a long time I could not find it. The happy “suddenly” happened completely by accident. I was looking through materials that had nothing to do with Kerch or Krasnodar. It was among them that this so desired , a very small piece of paper. Moreover, it was marked “secret”, and therefore it should not have been in these papers. Probably one of the archivists put the “secret” page in the wrong folder. But how grateful I am to him for this "mistake"!

This document is a letter from the deputy People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR N.F. Gavrilina, sent on June 24, 1944 to the Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Commissar of State Security 2nd Rank S.N. Kruglov. It briefly summarizes the history of the evacuation gold fund of the Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum, already well known to me. But for the sake of the next few lines, I rummaged through a lot of archival papers. Here they are: “In January 1944, the Directorate of Museums of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR turned to the head of the NKVD Directorate of the Krasnodar Territory with a request to investigate the circumstances of the disappearance of the gold fund of the Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum in the Spokoinensky partisan detachment. But there was still no response. In the spring of 1944, the chairman Armavir City Executive Committee V.P. Malykh (the same one that Avdeikina mentions. - E.K.), being with me in the presence of the head of the Museum Department A.D. Manevsky, said that suitcase # 15 was found at the site of the partisans’ camp near village Spokoinaya, but the suitcase was empty... The People's Commissariat of Education asks you to give instructions to investigate the case of the disappearance of the gold fund of the Kerch Museum..."

And such an investigation was carried out. However, in response to my request sent in the mid-seventies to the Krasnodar KGB about the investigation materials, I was told that there were none. As it turned out only in the mid-nineties, this was not true. But I no longer needed these materials, since I learned about their contents from the partisans of the Spokoinensky detachment and their relatives, whom I found in different places of the country.

The investigation was conducted harshly. The partisans were interrogated harshly, meticulously, and sometimes humiliatingly. Some of them were even arrested for some time “on suspicion of the loss of the “golden suitcase.” Some lost their party cards. But no traces of the Kerch gold were ever found.

Although, wait, it didn’t disappear without a trace! They told me an almost legendary story. In August 1946, in the forest near village Spokoinaya the boys found golden diadem. They took it to the police, from there it was transferred to the State Bank, and the further fate of the jewelry is unknown. Judging by later descriptions, it is very reminiscent royal diadem from the "Marfa treasure", which, I remind you, was located in " gold suitcase"But then it never occurred to anyone to make such a comparison. However, the only person who could say with complete certainty about the identity of the diadem was, of course, Yuliy Yulievich Marti. But at that time he lived in Kazakhstan, exiled there for his German nationality.

When they realized it in the seventies, it was already too late. For several years, teams of voluntary searchers scoured all the surrounding forests. As part of one of them, I walked through the campsites of the partisan detachment, but, alas and ah, I was out of luck!

But I still hope that maybe someone else will be lucky. After all, as far as I know, the search for the “golden suitcase” continues...

Evgraf Konchin

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...The Mystery of the Golden Suitcase is one of the most exciting mysteries of Russian history related to the search for treasures. And not at all because this treasure is of some gigantic magnitude, it has not happened at all. The suitcase, which will be discussed on the pages of this essay, contained only eighty kilograms of gold and silver, but these eighty kilograms meant much more to world historical science than all the treasures of Ali Baba. No wonder the Nazis, during the Great Patriotic War, chased this elusive suitcase throughout the territory of the Black Sea region and the North Caucasus they occupied, and harassed many people, trying to get their hands on it. But the suitcase has not been found to this day, and to this day the mystery of its existence excites the minds of the most famous treasure hunters and the most famous historians and archaeologists. Where is he, this Golden Suitcase, in what hiding place does he while away his days, hiding the values ​​contained in it from inquisitive humanity? Some experts will now try to answer this question, as well as many that accompany it, to us with all available completeness.

... The collections of the Kerch State Historical and Archaeological Museum, its exhibits amazed the imagination of many world-famous archaeologists - we should not forget that the history of Kerch began long before the beginning of our era: founded by the Greeks, this village, which they called Panticapaeum, over the course of a century turned into the most a real trade and cultural center, and already in the 5th century BC it became the brilliant capital of the mighty Bosporan kingdom, so archaeologists conducting their research on the territory of the entire Kerch Peninsula and its vast environs will have something to profit from for many centuries, or even whole ones millennium.

...In September 1941, when Hitler’s hordes crossed the Sivash and armadas of tanks with black crosses on their sides were gathering dust along the Crimean roads, rushing to the south of the peninsula, the director of the museum, Yu. Yu. Marti, gave instructions to evacuate the most significant exhibits, archives, excavation materials and the most important scientific studies covering the period from 1833 to 1941. In total, 19 large boxes were prepared for evacuation - a tiny part of the museum’s wealth, but at that difficult time, transport for these valuables was found with great difficulty. “Place No. 15” in the consignment of exported museum property was a large plywood suitcase, upholstered in black leatherette, which the director of the museum brought from home to load into it the most valuable, or rather priceless, stored in a special fund and included in the country’s gold reserves.

The suitcase was packed, unlike other exhibits, in the presence of the city party committee and the city executive committee, which perfectly illustrated the significance of the archaeological values ​​contained in it. At the end of the procedure, the suitcase was locked, tied with strong belts and sealed with the wax seal of the Kerch City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. To themselves, the museum workers immediately dubbed it the Golden Suitcase - it contained more than seven hundred objects made of gold and silver, and each of these objects was a unique monument of world culture. Here is a short list of all these values, preserved in the rescued archives:

“...Silver Pontic and Bosporan coins of the Mithridates time, 2nd-1st centuries BC, found during excavations of the Tiritak treasure in 1935.

...Golden diadem decorated with carnelians and pomegranate seeds; large gold buckle; ear hooks; thin, oval-shaped gold buckles and other items from the Marfovsky treasure.

...Golden plaques with images of Scythians drinking wine from a horn; gold plaques with the image of a young man holding a horse and with the image of the sphinx from the Mithridates treasure.

...A collection of medieval buckles, all kinds of bracelets, rings, rings, pendants with images of griffins, sphinxes, and a lion; medallions depicting Aphrodite and Eros; masks, golden belts made of silver plates, golden needles and petals.

... Panticapaean coins of pure gold, gold Bosporan coins of Greek and Roman times, Genoese, Byzantine, Turkish, Russian coins, medals, ancient icons and much more.”

... On September 26, Yu. Yu. Marti and the instructor of the city party committee F. T. Ivanenkova loaded the museum boxes onto a boat, and, risking being attacked by enemy aircraft, crossed through the stormy waters of the Kerch Strait to Taman. Near the very shore, the boat was nevertheless attacked by a single Messerschmitt, but well-aimed bursts of anti-aircraft machine guns from the pier drove it away. On the Caucasian coast, the boxes were loaded onto army vehicles, which immediately headed for Krasnodar. More than two hundred kilometers had to be overcome across the bare steppe, the caravan was constantly subjected to brutal attacks from the air. Julius Yulievich Marty later recalled that during raids, he and Ivanenkova had to drag the heavy and uncomfortable Golden Suitcase with them to the shelter because they had to save this suitcase (“place number 15”) in any, even the most extreme circumstances...

When the “expedition” finally arrived without losses (which is amazing) in Krasnodar, the boxes were hidden in a local museum. Soon, however, it was necessary to evacuate again, and in February 1942, all the exhibits, including the Golden Suitcase, were transferred by Ivanenkova to the Armavir City Executive Committee. By this time, Marty had not endured all the hardships of this difficult and dangerous journey and spent a long time in the Krasnodar hospital. However, all the efforts of the dedicated travelers ultimately turned out to be in vain - during one of the fascist air raids on Armavir, an air bomb hit the house where the boxes were stored, destroying it to the ground. Almost all the exhibits were lost. But the Golden Suitcase remained safe and sound.

When Ivanenkova brought the valuables of the Kerch museum to Armavir, the suitcase was immediately opened in the presence of members of a special commission, its contents were compared with the presented inventory. When it turned out that the contents and the inventory corresponded to each other, the suitcase was again sealed, this time with the seal of the Armavir City Executive Committee, and placed in a strictly guarded special storage facility of this institution, so that only a narrow circle of responsible employees knew about the existence of the brought valuables.

The further fate of the Golden Suitcase resembles a cleverly twisted detective story. Here is the story of A. M. Avdeikina, who in 1942 worked in the Armavir City Executive Committee and accepted the Golden Suitcase from Ivanenkova in the relay race:

“...Unfortunately for me, in the summer of 1942 I became seriously ill - typhus and pneumonia. She lay unconscious for a long time, then gradually began to come to her senses. I had a vague idea of ​​what was happening outside my room. But on August 3, a worried mother told me that the Germans were very close and it seemed that the city had been completely evacuated. Something had to be done.

...I got up, weak and weak. I went out into the street and was struck by the unusual, downright ominous desertedness. Staggering as if in a hurricane wind, she wandered to the city executive committee. I looked into the House of Soviets - the doors were wide open, empty, no one! I realized that the city executive committee had evacuated. With difficulty I climbed to the fourth floor... More out of habit than with any specific purpose, I looked into my room, which had long served as a “special storage room”. And immediately I saw this black leatherette suitcase! I couldn't believe my eyes. But I still had to believe - it was him...

How did they leave him, I thought with indignation. Obviously, the one who collected papers and things to be removed here, in the haste and confusion, simply did not pay attention to the shabby and unsightly suitcase, sandwiched between the wall and the closet. After all, I repeat, only two or three people knew about its contents...

What to do? I can't carry my suitcase alone. Should I call someone for help? Whom? You can't trust a stranger. But don’t give the people’s property to the enemy!

...I'm running home. I'm calling my nephew Shurik. Then he, a sickly teenager, was not even fourteen. I urge him: “Hurry, Shurik, hurry!”

...We had just climbed to the fourth floor of the House of Soviets when fascist planes appeared over the city. A terrible explosion shook the building. Shurik and I fell to the floor, glass and plaster fell on us. But they remained alive and unharmed. We were lucky - the bomb hit a neighboring house.

...We take the suitcase out into the street. We carry it together, rest after fifteen to twenty steps. After all, you can barely bear yourself - you haven’t fully recovered from your illness. I had about 40 kilograms left at that time, and I was not tall - one meter and fifty-three centimeters. And in this suitcase there were probably all eighty kilograms!

...We passed three blocks. Then my sister Polina came running and helped us. Finally our house on Lermontov Street. We leave our heavy luggage in the yard, and I go to look for a collection point. As I remember, it was prescribed even before my illness - near the meat processing plant. I’m making my way through the bombed streets, thinking to myself: what if it was moved or, even worse, everyone has already left the city?

But the collection point was at the appointed place, and to my joy, I saw there the chairman of our city executive committee, Vasily Petrovich Malykh. I blurt out to him about the precious suitcase and persistently ask for a car to transport it to the rear. Malykh promises, and I wander back home almost exhausted. We’re sitting with my sister and Shurik, waiting, but there’s still no car. I find myself at the assembly point again. They tell me that a passenger car was sent to us, but that means it didn’t arrive...

Actually, there is nothing particularly surprising here - the city is being mercilessly bombed, and many streets and roads have turned into complete rubble. The earth is trembling, everything around is plunged into some kind of dusty twilight - the sun is not visible. I remember how about twenty minutes ago I was almost cut off by a piece of shrapnel. It flew in front of my face with a whistle and crashed into the ground at my feet. The belated horror comes...

...The little ones are being picked up by a truck somewhere. The four of us drag the suitcase into the back. Vasily Petrovich orders the driver to drive to the village of Spokoinaya, a hundred kilometers south of Armavir - other roads from the city have already been cut by the Nazis. And this path may be in the hands of the Nazis, but there is a chance to break through. And Malykh tells me, if we get to the village, to immediately hand over the suitcase with gold to the State Bank branch. I’m trying to ask to join the partisan detachment, but Vasily Petrovich refuses: “The most important thing for us now is to save our values!” - he inspires me.

...On the way we were fired upon, bullets hit the tires, and they burst. We somehow got to the village of Spokoinaya on the ramps. I handed over the suitcase to the director of the local branch of the State Bank...

What happened next? I joined the refugees. We were detained by German machine gunners and taken to some clearing to find out our identity. Several hundred people were herded into this clearing. Having squeezed into the crowd, I first of all got rid of the act of handing over the “golden suitcase”, tore it up, and buried the pieces in the ground. I think this: the Germans will still detain me when they see from my documents that I work in the city executive committee. I did not tempt fate and at night with several employees of Soviet institutions I fled from the camp... I crossed the front line. Until 1943, she worked in the rear, and on February 4, a few days after our troops liberated Armavir, she returned home. Of the news that was posted to me, the main one related to... the Golden Suitcase!

It turns out that after the Germans occupied Armavir, the Gestapo came for me. They searched the whole house, even bayoneted a haystack in the yard. They asked when and what I left the city on, who exactly accompanied me... They were especially interested in what I took with me. They demanded to tell me where I hid the suitcase that I took from the city executive committee. The Nazis quickly found out about him! Probably one of the traitors saw me when I dragged him along the street from the House of Soviets home. The Gestapo understood what kind of suitcase they were informed about - after all, it was precisely this suitcase from Kerch itself, as I later found out, that the special Sonderkommando was chasing ... "

Further, the odyssey of the Golden Suitcase develops as follows. When Avdeikina brought it to the village of Spokoinaya and handed it over to the local branch of the State Bank, it was included in the register of other bank valuables subject to export. On August 6, 1942, the director of the bank, Yakov Markovich Loboda, loaded a suitcase onto a chaise and tried to take it to the rear, but was soon stopped by the Germans. But the Germans did not check what the frightened and tired man was carrying, but sent the refugees, including Loboda, back to Spokoinaya. Loboda did not return to the village, but turned into the forest and delivered the bank property to the Spokoinensky partisan detachment. There he remained an ordinary soldier.

At the beginning of December 1942, the detachment found itself in an extremely difficult situation. Its food bases were destroyed and ammunition ran out. The soldiers were starving, suffering from disease and sudden frosts. The detachment was surrounded by punitive forces and suffered heavy losses. Therefore, his command decided to make their way out of the encirclement in small groups, partly scattering to their native villages in order to continue the underground struggle with the invaders. Equipment, personal weapons, documents, and valuables were buried in different places. Only two or three people knew about each such cache. Who hid the Golden Suitcase? Unknown. Perhaps Loboda was among them. But upon leaving the encirclement, Loboda and several of his comrades were captured by the Nazis and on December 14 they were shot.

The widow of the former director of the Skokoinensky branch of the State Bank recalls that in prison the Germans beat him severely and kept asking him about some valuables. Surely, they tried to find out the secret of the Golden Suitcase, but got nothing from Loboda. Before the execution, the Germans allowed his wife to visit Loboda so that she could say goodbye to him. “We were given only three minutes,” recalls the partisan’s widow, Elena Pavlovna Loboda. - What Yakov Markovich hid from the fascists, he wanted to reveal to me. But the policeman stood right there - what kind of conversation is there! I was only able to understand that in the detachment he handed over his valuables to a certain Gulnitskaya...”

As it was possible to establish after the war from the surviving partisans, Irina Andreevna Gulnitskaya was something like a cashier in the partisan detachment. And she could well have been involved in the safety of Kerch gold. In search of traces of Gulnitskaya, researchers came across some facts that could help them in the search for the Golden Suitcase, and these facts showed that the valuables were buried by the partisans in a place known only to some of them. Domestic art critic E. Konchin, who devoted a lot of his time and energy to the search for the Golden Suitcase, later said:

“...Many facts showed that only five people in the detachment were aware of the suitcase, mainly from the leadership. Commissioner Ivan Andreevich Malkov also knew about them. He, according to the deputy commissar of the neighboring Upornensky detachment Vasily Serikov, mentioned the Golden Suitcase in a conversation with him, but did not expand on it, which is worth regretting now, because Ivan Andreevich has already died (this was in 1982)... The commissar’s son, Viktor Ivanovich , who joined the detachment as a teenager, recalls “some big black suitcase. We had no idea what was in it. But they took care of him more than cartridges...”

No longer alive are such eyewitnesses, undoubtedly versed in the special secrets of the detachment of eyewitnesses, as the head of the economic department M.I. Fedorov, special officer N.I. Chernogolovy, Nadezhda Vasilyevna Zakharchenko, an employee of one of the district party committees in Crimea... Gulnitskaya also died. But the thread that I connected with her name led to Gulnitskaya’s daughter. Larisa Aleksandrovna Molchanova, whom I found with great difficulty, was a 14-year-old girl with her mother in a partisan detachment. She said that she had something to do with the Golden Suitcase, which “brought her a lot of grief and suffering.” But she didn’t tell her daughter about this even after the war. “If she were alive,” said Larisa Alexandrovna, “I think she would help you.”

Larisa Alexandrovna suggested what else the chief of staff of the detachment, Komov, probably knew about the Kerch treasures. “But he’s probably been dead for a long time.” - she doubted. I began to make inquiries about Komov’s relatives, and... I found the very healthy 76-year-old Mikhail Ivanovich! I was glad to see him as my last real hope! However, this hope turned into only a few lines from a difficult-to-read letter. Komov wrote that he and two now deceased partisans were burying boxes of ammunition. Among them, according to him, “apparently, there was your suitcase...”. Komov does not remember the exact place where he was buried - “somewhere near the village of Besstrashnaya.” But the detachment commander Sokolov, as Mikhail Ivanovich can understand, has it marked on the map.

Where is this map now? Without a doubt, she died?! There were almost no people left alive in the detachment, and what can we say about a sheet of paper! Moreover, the commander of the Spokoinensky detachment P.N. Sokolov was killed in an unequal battle. Therefore, I had no doubt that none of his belongings or documents survived. But one day I received a letter that excited me and, in fact, abruptly changed the direction of my search. What its author, Armavir resident A.T. Buryakovsky, said was confirmed by information from other sources. And he informed that his recently deceased relative Alexandra Grigorievna Serdyukova fought in the Spokoinensky detachment. After the detachment broke up, she and the son of Commissioner Malkov, Viktor, made their way at night to her sister Praskovya, who lived on a farm near the village of Besstrashnaya. And most importantly, she brought the documents of the deceased commander. Among these documents was his operational map. Alexandra Grigorievna carefully hid them, and after the war she handed over Sokolov’s belongings and papers to his wife, who came from Leningrad. However, no one could tell me the address of Sokolov’s widow. But she possessed, perhaps, the only key to solving the mystery of the Golden Suitcase - a map on which her husband indicated the partisan hiding places, including the hiding place of the Kerch jewelry. Has the priceless map survived? How necessary it is now!

Unless, of course, the treasure remains in the partisan cache to this day...”

The Golden Suitcase has not been found to this day, but something is known that allows us to assume that the Kerch treasures most likely did not go to the Nazis, and are still buried in the soil of the Krasnodar Territory, and most likely this place is located in the area of ​​​​the village of Spokoinaya. In the summer of 1946, boys from this village found an ancient oval-shaped gold buckle in the forest and took it to the police. The jewelry was later handed over to the local branch of the State Bank, but, unfortunately, it is impossible to establish its further fate today. The director of the Kerch Museum, Yu.Yu.Marti, who later came across a description of this find, identified it as a buckle from the famous Marfovsky treasure, found in January 1926 by the peasant S. Neshev from the village of Marfovka near Kerch, and which was present in the inventory of the museum collection, concluded once in the Golden Suitcase. And if experts had immediately and seriously taken up this matter back then, in 1946, then the discovery of the buckle would certainly have led to the discovery of the mystery of the missing valuables. True, the police very confidently connected the gold buckle found in the forest with the Golden Suitcase, and even showed it to someone to establish its belonging to the Kerch relics. Of course, the home-grown examination was not successful. Because then only Marty could identify the monument with complete authority. But it’s unlikely that anyone in Spokoinaya had heard of him; besides, it was a difficult post-war time, and other worries overwhelmed people after such a difficult victory over the Nazis. And, of course, no one began to look for the former director of the museum, located hundreds of kilometers away.

Having examined the most important moments of the odyssey of the Golden Suitcase, the fate of which has not been decided to this day, it is quite appropriate to ask the question why the Germans needed these 80 kilograms of gold, which, although unique for historical science in general and for the history of the Northern Black Sea region in particular, but for the first time look, it wasn’t worth it for the Germans to involve a special Sonderkommando in their search, which they desperately needed for completely different matters? But if you consider that SS chief Heinrich Himmler himself was interested in the relics from the Kerch museum, then a lot becomes clear. In the search for the Golden Suitcase, specialists from one of the most powerful and most mysterious organizations of the Nazi Reich, the Annenerbe, were involved.

“Annenerbe” translated into Russian means “Heritage of Ancestors”, its full name is: “GERMAN SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF ANCIENT GERMAN HISTORY AND ANCESTORS’ HERITAGE”. This organization was created immediately after Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, and since then “Annenerbe” has been entrusted with studying everything related to the spirit, deeds, traditions, as well as the distinctive features and heritage of the “Indo-Germanic Nordic race”. Many first-class university scientists were involved in the activities of the society, who were, to one degree or another, fascinated by the ideas of the Nazis. With the help of these scientists, the society began excavations in different parts of the world - in Norway, the Middle East, Tibet - the Nazis persistently looked for their “roots”, which could convincingly prove the claims of the German race to world domination. Since 1937, when the Annenerbe came completely under the “ownership” of Himmler, all archaeological excavations were carried out only with the knowledge of society.

When the Nazis invaded the USSR and captured southern Ukraine, Annenerbe began exploring ancient settlements and burial mounds in the northern Black Sea region. The fact is that people from these lands were one of the main groups of Germanic tribes - the Goths, who until the 3rd century AD. e. had their own fairly developed culture, and were therefore considered by Hitler's historians as the most important object for research in search of the roots of the entire Germanic people. As is known, the Marfovsky treasure, which occupied most of the volume of the Golden Suitcase, consisted entirely of objects that were recovered from a rich Gothic burial. Previously, German museums could hardly boast of a single thing that belonged to the Ost-Gothic culture, and therefore the search for Kerch relics was given exceptional importance, especially since the massive golden diadem, which was the pride of the entire collection, according to the Germans, could belong to the queen of the Goths herself. Fedea, who ruled in the 1st century AD...

As a result of the misadventures of the Golden Suitcase described above, the Nazis did not get the Gothic relics, just as, apparently, no one at all has gotten them yet. The only exception is the gold buckle found by the Spokoinensky boys in 1946, but, as already indicated, its fate is unknown. And this is very suspicious, especially considering the fact that some ideologists and many functionaries of the Annenerbe, which officially ceased to exist after the end of the war, did not fold their arms at all, but continue to operate from underground. And it didn’t cost them anything to start searching for the Golden Suitcase many years ago, using their agents in the USSR and based on the financial capabilities of the almighty “Annenerbe”, which was reborn in some Latin American country under a new name. After all, in fact, the state never looked for lost values, and all searches were carried out only by enthusiasts, whose efforts without financial support were practically zero - for more than 50 years it was possible to find out only the names of those who could be involved in the burial of the Golden Suitcase, which did not lead to the discovery of the collection itself. It can be perfectly assumed that if the Annenerbe, which had been revived in the underground, had taken up this matter, its agents would have achieved much more success, especially in the first post-war years, when many of the people on whom the solution to the mystery depended were still alive. And therefore, one should not delude ourselves that the Gothic treasures from the Kerch museum are still on the territory of our country - they could just as easily be lost forever to domestic science, and, at best, decorate the private collection of some American oil magnate who someday will consider it possible to part with them in order to resell them to some society for the preservation of archaeological values. And at worst, they will settle forever in the secret sanctuary of admirers of the “spirit, deeds and traditions of the Indo-Germanic Nordic race,” which will be tantamount to their final loss for all cultural humanity.