“Gold” of the Stamp Museum

“Gold” of the Stamp Museum
Shortly after Hungary’s entry into World War II (27 June 1941), just eight months after the Museum’s exhibition hall opened in Dob utca, the exhibition was closed on 11 July, and the entire collection was moved to the building’s air-raid shelter in armoured crates. Three out of thirteen large crates, reinforced with locks and padlocks contained the museum’s most valuable collections, while all other items were stored in the remaining ten.
However, when Soviet troops were approaching Budapest in late 1944, the collection had to be relocated. The ten crates of less valuable items were sent to the post office directorate in Sopron, and the three crates that contained the most valuable items were entrusted to the custody of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank staff; they were first taken to the central bank’s security facility in Veszprém, before being transported to the West with the second gold train, together with the gold reserves and other public collections on 23 January 1945. The shipment fell into the hands of the US Army in Spital am Pyhrn, Austria, where the bank’s management handed over the entrusted valuables to the Financial Advisor of the US Army on 13 May 1945. The “three chests carrying unknown contents” mentioned in the protocol drafted at that time were presumably the three crates that contained the “gold” of the Stamp Museum.
The Americans returned the entire shipment, including the three crates of the Stamp Museum as a result of government negotiations in 1946.