At the height of the Battle of Britain, when the UK government needed a secret storage location for 186,332 gold bars, Canada did it.
Shipped across the Atlantic and stored under a hastily constructed vault in Montreal, the fish operation is known for the large amount of gold involved – and the great secrecy that followed.
The lesson: Canada and its cliffs can keep secrets.
So it might seem like a bit of a surprise that a famous diamond, once feared lost to history, turns up after sitting inside a Canadian bank for a century.
The Florentine Diamond, a 137-carat Pear Shaped with a “good citron”, has adorned European Royalty for centuries. But after it disappeared at the end of World War II, historians and experts feared the diamond was stolen, cut or hidden in South America.
but A report from The New York Times reveals a different history: The prized gem remains close to the family, with few heirs told of the diamond’s location.
After the first World War, the Austro-Hungun Charor Charles I treasured jewels moved to Switzerland for the sake of the fears of bolsheviks and anarchist uprisings. He and his family later fled to Switzerland in exile.
Reunited in 1940 as the Nazis quickly moved across Europe, Charles’ wife, Zita, fled the continent with her eight children, arriving in the United States in a cardboard suitcase. The family then traveled to Canada and settled in the province of Quebec.
“My grandmother feels safe – she can finally breathe,” Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen, grandson of Charles I, a resident of Charles I, told The New York Times. “I thought that, at that stage, the little suitcase went into a bank safe, and that was it. And in that bank safe, it just stayed.”
At that time, only two living people, the Emperor’s sons Robert and Rodolphe, were told where the diamond was hidden. Zita demanded that they keep the location – and the Diamond’s existence – a secret for 100 years after Charles’ death in 1922. Before their deaths, the brothers passed the information on to their own sons.
“The less people know about it, the more security,” said Von Habsburg-Lothringen.
Zita returned to Europe in 1953, leaving the jewels in a bank in Quebec. He died almost four decades later, at 96.
The Storied History of the Diamond – It is possible that Charles owned the bold, probably owned by Florence’s Clorence family of the Habsburg Dynasty – partly justifying explanations about the suddenness of its disappearance. So did its murky beginnings. Others specified that the irregular outline of the outline with a cut that included 126 facets replaced how stones were once cut in India. Another theory is that the diamond was cut by a European – the famous changer Jodewyk van Berken – in a pyramid shape.
The disappearance of the stone prompts a count of Austrian jewels stolen by Hitler when American troops find Diamkon and return it to Viamnah. Another is that the diamond was brought to South America, recut and then sold in the United States. Others have posited that the habsburgs, desperate for money as their empire crumbled, sold off diamonds and other assets.
Briefly, the Shah of Persia, a 99-carat Stone Recut from a larger Diamond, is believed to be part of the lost Florentine. Some have suggested a recut diamond offered at the Geneva sale in 1981 may again be Florentine.
But the stone that is not in Canada is certainly “the real, historical ‘Florentine Diamond'”, said Christoph Köchert, at the time of the imperial court of Austria.
The family said the diamond will be displayed in a Canadian museum in the coming years, adding that it will not be sold – and it will not reveal how much it is worth.