"I was in the Koenigsberg Castle in the afternoon of April 8-that is, before the fire broke out-and I think I was among the last to see the Amber Room, or rather what had remained of it [by then]," Mr Arinstein tells in a letter. He took part in combat operations to liberate Koenigsberg during WWII.
According to the man, the castle caught fire only two or three days after the city had been captured. "The amber panels, packed in boxes, were held in the castle's basement, something I learned from a German custodian who was still staying at the museum. I had no doubts then that the Room was destroyed in the blaze and that the Red Army had nothing to do with [the demise]," Mr Arinstein said.
"Fires in Koenigsberg began before the storm, and were caused by the Allied Air Forces' bombings of its outskirts. Along with fire bombs, the Allies used blockbusters, of which our Air Force had none at that time," the expert said. He laid the blame for the Koenigsberg fires on U.S. and British air strikes.
The original Amber Room was presented to Peter the Great of Russia in 1716 by King Frederick William of Prussia as a gift to seal the friendship between their two states. Fifty years later, the new empress, Catherine the Great, restored and augmented the Amber Room, which was by then installed in the Catherine Palace of the Tsarskoye Selo estate, outside St. Petersburg. As German troops approached the city in the winter of 1941, the Room was dismantled and secretly transported to Koenigsberg, then the Nazi capital of East Prussia. It has been missing ever since.
In 1979, the Russian government made decision to replicate the Amber Room. The replica was unveiled in the Catherine Palace last May, as St. Petersburg was celebrating its 300th birthday.
