I worked on a farm in the former West Germany (BRD), before the re-unification, not far over the border from East Germany (DDR). The proprietor's family was leasing the historic farmstead. His family's original farm had been just over the border in the DDR, and of course appropriated by the government. At the point they learned the American occupiers were withdrawing and they would be in the Russian occupation zone, they high-tailed it into the American occupation zone.

They visited me in America a couple years after The Wall fell, and he told me the rest of the story. Apparently his father's initial plan was to stick it out and see how things unfolded, but first they buried the family silver in the forest. He was in his early teens and supplied the teenage labor.

When they could return after the wall fell, he remembered roughly where the hoard should be. It took him a couple days with a metal detector, but they found it. He was very lucky because it was very near where the DDR had done trenching for the boarder hazards employed all along the east/west border. Some of the pieces were in very bad shape after 45 years underground, but most of it could be restored.