Recently the residents of several high-rise buildings at the end of Ruska Street, in a residential neighborhood of Chernivtsi, unwittingly found themselves at the center of a phenomenon known as the “gold rush.” A teenager from one of the buildings discovered some gold coins wrapped in a rag in the middle of a vacant lot that has been earmarked for a playground. According to eyewitnesses, he found some 150 gold coins, whose present whereabouts remain unknown. He also bragged to his peers, who turned the vacant lot into a veritable Klondike. Dozens of teenagers and their parents and friends from nearby villages joined the digging party. Some had more luck than others. In all they unearthed over 200 coins, but there are rumors of a larger number. Residents with a view overlooking the “gold rush” say that the digging continued almost nonstop, even at night, with people working by the light of portable electric lamps.
The staff of the Bukovyna Archeological Research Center at Yury Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University received a tip-off about the find. They have determined that most of the treasure consisted of five-ruble coins from the reign of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II (1898-1917), each weighing 4.3 grams with a high gold content. Word has it that the treasure hunters sold most of the coins on the cheap, 20 to 50 hryvnias apiece, while the real value of this numismatic collection is much higher. According to rough estimates, the treasure is worth at least 50,000 to 60,000 hryvnias.
There will inevitably be a police investigation into this case, since current legislation specifies that all treasures discovered in the ground belong to the state, while the concealment or appropriation of such a find is a crime. Article 343 of Ukraine’s Civil Code states: “Any discovered treasure, which is an item of historical and cultural value, is the property of the state. The person discovering such a treasure is entitled to a reward of up to 20% of its value at the moment of the discovery, if s/he has immediately notified the police or local authorities about the treasure and handed it over to the respective state body or local authority.”
Aside from its material worth, this treasure has great historical and cultural value. After all, it is a silent witness to the tumultuous events that resulted in its being buried. The question naturally arises as to the circumstances that led to the interment of the treasure on Ruska Street. The building debris in which it was discovered had been brought from the site of a condemned building located in an old suburb of Chernivtsi. The residents, or more likely the resident, of the building concealed the treasure in the face of some extreme circumstances, while a dramatic event, possibly death, prevented the owner from retrieving the treasure from its hiding place. Serhiy Pyvovarov, director of the Bukovyna Archeological Research Center and assistant professor of Chernivtsi National University, says several theories are likely. The owners of the treasure might have been Jews that lived in Chernivtsi, who managed to conceal it despite the threat of persecutions and pogroms during the two world wars. A 1939 badge of a Siguranza (Romanian secret police) officer discovered at the site of the “gold rush” gives rise to another theory. If this badge was hidden with the treasure, its owner could have been a secret police agent who may have been involved in persecutions of Chernivtsi Jews and in establishing the ghetto during the Second World War, and who was subsequently punished. Unfortunately, the treasure seekers irretrievably destroyed this document of our history, making it impossible to solve yet another mystery surrounding the city of Chernivtsi.
The gold rush is still on. When we were leaving the site of the discovery, a group of girls carrying hoes was headed toward the site.
