Wehrmacht General Escaped in 1945 — 79 Years Later His Waterfall Bunker Hideout Discovered

In August 2024, a hiking guide in the Austrian Alps noticed something odd behind a waterfall, a rusted metal grate half buried in moss.

When the excavation team finally breached the concrete wall 3 weeks later, they found a ventilation shaft leading down at the bottom 40 ft below the surface.

Their flashlights illuminated a perfectly preserved underground complex.

Dormatory beds canned food labeled 1945 and a leather briefcase with SS documentation.

The name inside belonged to General Major Otto Rainer, a mocked intelligence officer who’ vanished from Birch Tescaden as the right collapsed.

For 79 years, everyone assumed he’d died in the chaos.

The bunker proved otherwise.

That hiking guide had just discovered one of the last unknown Nazi hideouts in Europe.

A facility that was never supposed to exist.

If you want to see what investigators found inside after 8 decades sealed underground, hit that like button.

It helps us bring more forgotten WW2 stories like this to light.

And subscribe so you don’t miss what we uncover next.

Now, back to the spring of 1945 when Otto Rainer realized the war was lost.

By April 1945, Rea knew exactly what happened to generals who fell into Allied hands.

General Major Otto Rainer wasn’t a household name like Raml or Yuderion, but withintelligence circles, he was essential.

Born in Graz in 1898, he’d served in the First World War before joining the Reichwear in the 1920s.

By 1939, he commanded intelligence operations for Army Group South, specializing in partisan movements and resistance networks across occupied territories.

His personnel file, declassified in 1998, described him as methodical, reserved, fluent in four languages.

He wasn’t a Nazi party member until 1943, a pragmatic late addition to protect his position.

Reer’s posting changed in January 1945.

He was transferred to the Aubber Salsburg complex near Burch Tesgaden, Hitler’s mountain retreat.

His new assignment, coordinate the evacuation of sensitive intelligence documents as the Reich’s borders collapsed.

He worked directly under General Alfred Jado, chief of the Werem operation staff.

The work was frantic.

Truckloads of files leaving daily, heading for locations across Bavaria and Austria.

Some were burned, some were hidden.

Rener supervised both.

By March 1945, even the Aubberalssburg was preparing for evacuation.

Rener had seen what happened to generals captured by the Soviets, show trials, executions, labor camps.

The Western Allies weren’t much better.

At Nuremberg, they’d hang anyone connected to war crimes.

And Rener’s intelligence work had touched every occupied zone.

His files documented partisan executions, reprisal operations, collaboration networks, the kind of information that guaranteed a death sentence.

He had access, though, access to maps, money, false papers, and most critically, construction plans for alpine fortifications that were never completed.

One blueprint particularly interested him.

A hydroelectric survey bunker near the criminal waterfalls in Austria.

Built in 1943 and officially abandoned 6 months later due to flooding issues.

The facility was struck from official records.

Nobody remembered it existed.

The conditions were perfect for disappearing.

The Alpine region was chaos.

Refugees flooding south.

Deserters vanishing into mountains.

Documents burning in every government office.

The chain of command had disintegrated.

Communications were sporadic.

A general could walk away from his post in April 1945 and nobody would chase him.

They were too busy saving themselves.

None of them knew that Rener had been preparing his escape for 4 months, stockpiling supplies in a bunker the Reich had forgotten.

But investigators would later discover that Rener wasn’t working alone.

and what his accompllices did with classified intelligence would shock even veteran war crimes prosecutors.

Rainer’s final briefing at Aubberalssburg occurred on April 19th, 1945.

According to the duty log, he met with two other intelligence officers in the compound’s map room at 0600 hours.

The meeting lasted 17 minutes.

No minutes were recorded, unusual for Weremach protocol.

But by then, protocol meant nothing.

An SS guard posted outside later testified at a 1947 Allied tribunal that Rainer left carrying a leather document case and wearing a civilian overcoat.

He told the guard he was driving to Salsburg for a file transfer.

The guard never saw him again.

Rainer staff car gray Volkswagen cub wagon was found 3 days later in a barn outside Bad Reichen Hall 30 km north of where he’d claimed to be heading.

The fuel tank was empty.

The document case was gone.

Local police filed a report assuming desertion.

There were thousands.

The report noted his rank and name, then disappeared into administrative chaos.

What happened next came from witness statements collected decades later.

A farmer near Criminal Austria remembered a mocked officer arriving on foot in late April 1945.

The man spoke refined German, offered gold coins for food and silence, and asked directions to the old survey station near the waterfalls.

The farmer assumed he was a deserter heading for Italy.

There were hundreds of those, too.

The Criminal Waterfalls are among Europe’s highest, a thundering 380 m cascade in three tiers.

In 1945, the area was remote, barely accessible by mountain paths, no permanent settlements nearby.

The survey bunker had been built into the cliff face behind the middle tier hidden by water mist and noise.

Entrance required a steep climb, then a narrow path behind the falls.

In spring melt, the path was submerged.

You’d need to know exactly where to look.

Rainer knew construction documents showed the bunker’s entrance.

A concrete added camouflaged as natural rock sealed with a steel door painted to match the stone.

Inside, 40 meters of tunnel led to a three- room facility, dormatory storage, and a small operations room with radio equipment.

The hydroelectric survey story had been covered.

The bunker was built as an emergency intelligence station, abandoned when Alpine Fortress plans collapsed.

The last confirmed sighting of Otter was April 23rd, 1945.

A postmaster in Criminal Village reported a man matching his description purchasing kerosene and batteries.

paying in Reich’s marks.

After that, silence.

Allied intelligence questioned wear mocked officers through summer 1945, compiling lists of missing personnel.

Rener’s name appeared on a July roster mark status unknown.

Presumed deceased or captured Eastern Front.

His family filed a death certificate in 1948.

His wife, living in Graz, told authorities she’d received no communication since April 1945.

She assumed the Soviets had taken him.

The Austrian government declared him legally dead in 1950.

The intelligence community forgot about him.

There were bigger war criminals to chase.

What happened in those final days would remain unknown for 79 years.

No body was recovered.

No witnesses came forward.

The bunker stayed sealed, hidden behind 50 cubic meters of falling water every second, invisible unless you knew where to look.

What happened next would reveal a survival plan so detailed.

Investigators would spend months cataloging everything Rener had hidden inside.

The official investigation into Rener’s disappearance lasted exactly six weeks.

The Allied War Crimes Commission opened a file in June 1945 after his name appeared in captured mocked intelligence rosters.

The file noted his role in partisan operations across Yugoslavia and Poland, areas where reprisal executions had occurred.

But the investigation hit immediate problems.

No witnesses, no body, no evidence of his whereabouts after April 23rd, the case officer wrote in August 1945.

Subject likely deceased in Alpine region or captured by Soviet forces.

No further investigation warranted given higher priority cases.

Rener’s family received contradictory information.

His wife, Elizabeth, was told by one official that he’d likely died in the chaotic retreat.

Another suggested he might be in a Soviet camp.

Thousands of were mocked officers were their fates unknown.

She wrote letters to the Red Cross, to military records offices, to prisoner exchange programs.

Every reply said the same thing.

No record found.

The conflicting accounts started in 1946.

A former Weremach corporal claimed he’d seen Rainer in a displaced person’s camp near Munich in May 1945.

Another witness said he’d spotted him boarding a ship in Genoa heading for Argentina.

Neither story held up under questioning.

Both witnesses had been trying to sell information for food, but the stories persisted in intelligence circles.

Rener joined Odesseratlands.

Reer reached South America.

Rener was living under a false name in Spain.

One theory gained traction in the 1950s.

A West German journalist researched missing intelligence officers and concluded Rener had been captured by American forces, then recruited for Cold War intelligence work under a new identity.

It wasn’t unprecedented.

Operation paperclipip had brought Nazi scientists to America and the CIA’s Gellen organization employed former Worerm intelligence officers against the Soviets.

The theory suggested Rener’s disappearance was actually defection, but no evidence supported it.

When CIA files were partially declassified in the 1990s, researchers searched for Rainer’s name.

Nothing.

His intelligence work had been significant, but not irreplaceable.

The Americans had plenty of former We were mocked officers willing to share information without needing to hide one.

Why the case went cold was simple.

Lack of priority.

By 1946, the Nuremberg trials focused on major war criminals.

Hitler’s inner circle concentration camp commonance.

Generals directly responsible for atrocities.

A mid-level intelligence officer who’ vanished.

There were hundreds like him.

Resources went elsewhere.

The mystery faded from official concern, but persisted in Austrian local history.

Elderly residents around Kriml occasionally mentioned the officer who’d asked for directions to the falls, but memories were vague, distorted by time.

By the 1970s, even those witnesses were dying off.

For decades, the Austrian Alps kept their secret.

The waterfall thundered day and night, mist obscuring the cliff face.

tourists hiking past without noticing the concrete camouflaged into stone until 2024 when a guide named Stephan Hoffman decided to explore a drainage problem.

The story of Otto Rainer essentially vanished from public consciousness by 1955.

His wife died in 1962, having never learned his fate.

His daughter, interviewed in 1989 by a German television documentary on missing mocked officers, said she’d given up hope of closure decades earlier.

The file in the Austrian State Archives was three centimeters thick, mostly correspondence between family and authorities, leading nowhere.

Occasional revivals of interest occurred, but went nowhere.

In 1978, a historian researching where mocked intelligence structures found Reer’s name in organizational charts and tried to trace his fate.

The investigation reached the same dead ends.

Last seen, April 1945, no body, no evidence.

The historian published a footnote suggesting Rener had likely died during the chaotic retreat, possibly killed by Austrian resistance fighters who targeted fleeing Nazis in the war’s final weeks.

The 50th anniversary of V Day in 1995 prompted several Austrian documentaries about the war’s end in the Alps.

One crew filmed at the Criminal Waterfalls discussing how refugees and deserters had fled through the area.

They stood 40 m from Rainer’s bunker without knowing it existed.

Technology of the era wouldn’t have helped.

Ground penetrating radar struggled with water saturated cliff faces and nobody had reason to search there anyway.

Geopolitical barriers didn’t apply to Rainer’s case the way they did to some Eastern Front mysteries.

But bureaucratic ones did.

Austrian and German archives weren’t fully digitized until the 2000s.

Connecting scattered documents across multiple agencies was nearly impossible.

A personnel file in Stoutgart engineering drawings and lens witness statements in Bad Reichenhole.

Researchers would need to know exactly what to look for and where to look.

The Cold War brought its own complications.

Former weremocked officers who genuinely joined American or Soviet intelligence programs were protected by classification.

Anyone researching missing officers face stonewalling.

Was this person actually missing or were they working for someone’s intelligence service? The uncertainty killed investigations before they started.

One researcher came closest.

In 2003, Marcus Keller, an Austrian engineer with an interest in World War II fortifications, obtained construction records for Alpine defensive positions.

He found references to the Criminal Survey bunker and noted it was struck from records in 1944.

He filed a request with the Austrian Federal Monuments Office to investigate, suggesting the site might have historical value.

The request was denied.

Accessing a location behind the waterfall was deemed too dangerous and expensive for a facility that had been officially abandoned.

Then in July 2024, everything changed.

The Criml Waterfalls experienced a severe drought, the worst in regional meteorological records dating back to 1880.

Water flow dropped to 15% of normal volume.

And when the water receded, it revealed something that had been hidden in plain sight for eight decades.

Something that would force historians to rewrite what they thought they knew about the Third Reich’s final days.

The catalyst was climate change.

Summer 2024 was the hottest on record across central Europe.

Alpine glaciers retreated to historic lows.

The criminal waterfalls, normally fed by snow melt and glacier runoff, became a fraction of their usual volume.

By mid July, entire sections of cliff face that had been underwater for centuries were exposed.

Stefan Hoffman, a 34year-old hiking guide who’d led tours around Kriml for a decade.

Notice it first.

On July 18th, 2024, he was scouting an alternate trail route when he saw something odd on the cliff face behind the middle tier.

From a distance of about 80 m, what looked like a straight edge, too straight for natural rock formation.

He took photos with his phone and zoomed in and saw what appeared to be a metal grate partially covered in moss.

The next day, he returned with climbing equipment and a friend who worked in construction.

They rapelled down to the spot directly behind where water normally fell.

Up close, the metal grate was clearly man-made.

Rusted iron bars set into concrete, approximately 1 m square.

Behind it, darkness.

They couldn’t see how deep it went.

Hoffman reported the discovery to the Salsburg State Archaeological Office on July 22nd.

The initial response was skeptical.

The region had old mining shafts, abandoned hydroelectric surveys, even smuggler caches from the 19th century.

But when the site inspector reviewed Hoffman’s photographs and GPS coordinates, something clicked.

He cross- referenced the location with wartime construction records and found Marcus Keller’s 2003 report about the survey bunker.

A proper investigation launched on August 3rd, 2024.

The team included archaeologists, structural engineers, and a historian specializing in alpine fortress fortifications.

They brought portable generators, cutting equipment, cameras, and critically breathing apparatus.

Sealed spaces could contain toxic gases after 79 years.

The first challenge was accessing the entrance safely.

With water flow reduced, they could reach the great, but cutting through required precautions.

The cliff face was unstable, weakened by decades of water erosion.

They set up a rope system anchored 30 m above.

Working into our shifts, the great came off on August 5th.

Behind it, a concrete line tunnel descended at a 15° angle.

The air that rushed out was stale, but not toxic.

The ventilation system had somehow kept functioning.

They sent a drone camera down first.

Its lights illuminated 40 m of tunnel ending at a steel door.

The door was closed but not locked.

The first human to enter was Dr.

Anna Kchner, the lead archaeologist.

Her helmet camera recorded everything.

The tunnel was bone dry despite being carved into water saturated rock.

The engineering was exceptional.

At the steel door, she found the handle turned easily.

Hinges still functional thanks to heavy grease.

She pushed it open.

The first room was a dormatory, three steel frame beds with decayed mattresses, a wooden table and chairs, shelves mounted on concrete walls, and everywhere artifacts, tin plates, cutlery, a kerosene lantern, clothing hanging on hooks, all covered in dust, but remarkably preserved in the dry sealed environment.

The second room was storage.

This was where the investigation became something bigger.

Floor to ceiling shelves, health supplies, canned food with wear mock labels dated 1944 to 1945.

Medical supplies and original packaging, boxes of ammunition, spare uniforms, boots, blankets.

Enough for one person to survive for years, maybe longer.

But what shocked the team was the third room, Operation Center.

A table with maps still spread across it.

Allied advance routes marked in red, escape pads marked in blue, a radio transmitter, Americanmade likely captured equipment, filing cabinets, and on the desk a leather briefcase.

Dr.

Kchner opened it with gloved hands.

Inside SS identification documents for general major autorainer, wearmock intelligence service, travel papers with blank spaces for aliases, Swiss Franks, US dollars and gold coins, a Walther P38 pistol, and a journal.

The recovery took 3 weeks.

Every item was photographed in place, cataloged, then carefully transported out.

The journal alone was 200 pages leatherbound, written in tight German script.

But what investigators found in that journal would reveal a survival plan that went far beyond hiding and proof that Rainer hadn’t been working alone.

The first examination occurred inside the bunker itself.

Dr.

Kchner’s team documented every object’s position before removal.

The placement told the story.

The dormatory showed signs of actual habitation.

One bed had a depression in the mattress where someone had slept repeatedly.

A coffee cup sat on the bedside table with residue still visible at the bottom.

The kerosene lantern’s wick was partially burned.

Artifact recovery revealed the scope of Rainer’s preparation.

The canned food wasn’t random.

It was organized by type and date, suggesting systematic planning.

Investigators counted 487 cans.

Meat, vegetables, fruits, condensed milk.

They calculated it was enough for one person to survive 18 to 24 months with strict rationing.

The medical supplies included morphine ampool sulfa drug surgical equipment bandages, a complete field hospital kit.

The ammunition boxes held 800 rounds for the Walther P38 and 500 rounds for a carabiner 98K rifle they found mounted on the wall.

Forensic analysis began immediately at the University of Salsburg.

The journal was the priority.

Conservation specialists spent two weeks carefully separating pages that had stuck together over decades.

The ink was standard mocked issue.

Iron G ink that had faded but remained legible.

Carbon dating of the paper confirmed manufacture between 1943 to 1945.

The journal’s contents were explosive.

The first entry was dated January 15th, 1945.

Jaw has approved document evacuation.

I’ve selected three locations for priority files.

The waterfall site remains unknown to everyone except Halpman Weber and myself.

Halman Weber, that was a new name, cross referencing with mocked records, identified him.

Fran Weber, intelligence officer assigned to Aubber Solsber declared missing April 1945.

Subsequent entries detailed Rainer’s planning.

February entries listed supplies being diverted from Wormach’s doors.

small quantities that wouldn’t be noticed amid the chaos, but accumulating into substantial stockpiles.

March entries described reconnaissance visits to the bunker, testing the radio equipment, verifying the ventilation system still functioned.

The April entries became tense.

April 10th, Americans have crossed the Rine at multiple points.

Russians are 60 km from Berlin.

The end is weeks away, perhaps days.

April 15th, received interrogation transcripts from Nuremberg Preliminary Investigations.

Anyone associated with intelligence operations in occupied territories faces automatic arrest.

My name appears on three target lists.

The entry for April 19th, 1945, the day he disappeared, was detailed.

Final departure executed as planned.

Took only essential documents.

Weber will follow separately with additional files in 3 days.

The waterfall site provides perfect isolation until Allied attention shifts elsewhere.

Estimate 6 months before safe movement to Switzerland.

But the journal entries ended abruptly on April 28th, 1945.

The final entry was just two words.

Weber compromised.

Historical cross reference filled in that gap.

Allied intelligence records declassified in 1998 showed Fran Weber was arrested by American forces near Salsburg on April 25th, 1945.

He was carrying classified wear documents under interrogation.

He claimed he was acting alone trying to sell intelligence to American officers.

He never mentioned Rener.

Weber was held for 2 years then released in 1947.

He died in 1989 in Hamburg, having never spoken publicly about his wartime intelligence work.

The investigation found something else in the bunker that changed everything.

A hidden compartment behind a false panel in the operations room.

Inside filing boxes contained photocopied mocked intelligence reports, not originals, but copies made on captured Allied photocopy equipment.

The reports covered partisan networks, resistance organization structures, and agent lists across Yugoslavia, Greece, and Poland.

It was exactly the kind of documentation war crimes prosecutors needed.

DNA analysis came next.

The Austrian Federal Criminal Police sent a forensic team to collect samples.

They found hair on a comb, skin cells on the clothing, and traces of blood on bandages in the medical kit.

DNA extraction was successful.

The problem was comparison.

Rener had no living descendants.

His daughter had died childless in 1995, but investigators got creative.

They tracked down descendants of Rainer’s brother, who died in 1952.

A grand nephew living in Vienna agreed to DNA testing.

Results came back in October 2024.

95% probability of familial match.

The hair and skin cells in the bunker belonged to someone closely related to Otter Rainer.

Combined with the journal and identification documents, the conclusion was certain.

Rener had lived in the bunker.

But the biggest question remained unanswered.

How long he stayed and what happened after he left? The forensic team analyzed the evidence for timeline clues.

The coffee cup residue was tested.

Chemical analysis suggested it was consumed within weeks of being poured, not years.

The kerosene lantern’s burn pattern indicated it had been used recently relative to when it was last filled.

The bed’s mattress compression showed repeated use over months, not years.

Then investigators found the critical piece of evidence, a calendar on the wall with dates marked through July 1945.

The last mark date was July 23rd, 3 months after Rainer entered the bunker, he’d left.

and what forensic analysis revealed about where he went after those 3 months would solve the 79-year mystery, but raised questions that nobody had thought to ask.

The evidence assembled into a clear picture.

Otter Rainer had executed a meticulously planned escape, surviving in the waterfall bunker from late April through July 1945.

The journal documented his daily routine, rationing food, monitoring Allied radio broadcasts on the capture transmitter, waiting for the chaos to subside.

His plan was to emerge when Allied attention shifted from hunting individual weremocked officers to occupation governance.

The breakthrough came from analyzing documents in the hidden compartment alongside the journal.

Rainer hadn’t just been hiding intelligence reports.

He’d been preparing leverage.

The photocopid files included names of local collaborators, resistance members who’d worked both sides, and intelligence assets who could be valuable to Allied occupation forces.

These weren’t war crimes documents.

They were bargaining chips.

A cross reference with newly accessible Swiss banking records provided the answer.

In August 1945, a man named Otto Riptor opened an account at Credit Swiss in Zurich, depositing 50,000 Swiss Franks, equivalent to approximately $800,000 today.

The signature matched samples of Rainer’s handwriting.

Swiss immigration records from September 1945 showed an autoer Austrian national registering residency in Lucern.

The physical description matched Rainer.

Height, age, eye color.

Why previous theories had failed became obvious.

Everyone assumed Rener either died in the Alps, fled to South America, or was captured.

Nobody considered the simplest explanation.

He’d hidden nearby, then walked into Switzerland with false papers once the immediate chaos passed.

By August 1945, displaced persons were flooding across borders daily.

One more Austrian refugee drew no attention.

Switzerland had accepted thousands of refugees by mid 1945.

Allied forces were focused on occupation and reconstruction, not tracking every weremocked officer.

Without the photographs and biometric databases of the modern era, false identity papers worked.

Rener had expertise in creating false documentation.

It was literally his job in intelligence.

The papers in the briefcase were blank templates waiting to be filled.

The biggest surprise was what Rener did with the intelligence documents.

Swiss Federal Archives accessed with legal authorization in November 2024 revealed that in October 1945, an Austrian national had contacted American intelligence officers in burn offering information on Soviet intelligence networks in Austria and Yugoslavia.

The information had been valuable.

It formed part of early CIA operations in the region.

The source was paid and granted immunity.

The source’s alias was autoter.

American intelligence files confirmed it.

Declassified CIA documents from 1945 to 1947 showed payments to an Austrian informant cenamed Alpine, who provided intelligence on Soviet activities.

The information’s detail and accuracy suggested a highle weremok source.

Alpine was active until 1947, then disappeared from records.

The CIA assumed he’d either been compromised or had simply stopped providing useful information.

What happened to Rener after 1947 required detective work across Swiss records.

Otto Richter continued living in Lucern until 1952 when he moved to a small town near Interlockan.

He worked as a translator.

His language skills were legitimate and marketable.

He never married, kept a low profile and died in 1959 at age 61.

His death certificate listed cause as heart failure.

He was buried in a small cemetery under the name Otto Richtor.

No one attended his funeral.

The revealed truth was conclusive.

Reer had executed a successful escape, survived in the bunker for 3 months, then reinvented himself in Switzerland.

He’d sold intelligence to American forces, not out of ideology, but as insurance against prosecution.

The Americans got valuable information on Soviet networks.

He got immunity and money.

By the time anyone might have traced him, the Cold War had priorities that made one former mocked officer irrelevant.

The intelligence reports found in the bunker explained why Weber had been carrying similar documents when arrested.

They’d planned to sell information together.

When We Weber was caught, Rainer stayed hidden, then proceeded alone.

Though Weber compromised, journal entry showed he’d known instantly that his partner’s capture meant the joint plan had failed.

One question remained uncertain.

Did Swiss authorities know who Otto Richtor really was? No definitive evidence exists.

Either way, Switzerland had sheltered thousands of war refugees, and their vetting processes in 1945 were overwhelmed.

Either Reeer’s false papers were good enough to fool them, or someone looked the other way, given Switzerland’s complicated relationship with Nazi refugees.

Both scenarios are plausible.

The bunker is now sealed again, protected as a historical site by the Austrian Federal Monuments Office.

The waterfall’s flow has returned to normal levels.

The drought of 2024 was an anomaly, and the entrance is once again hidden behind tons of falling water.

Researchers estimate it might be another century before conditions expose it again naturally.

Otter Rainer’s grave in Switzerland remains as it was a simple headstone with his false name.

Swiss authorities have noted his real identity in their records but haven’t changed the marker.

He died as Otto Richtor and legally that’s who’s buried there.

His grand nephew, the DNA match, had no interest in claiming the body.

He made his choices.

He told investigators, “Let him stay where he put himself.

” The intelligence documents from the bunker were analyzed by historians specializing in Cold War operations.

Their contents confirmed what researchers had suspected.

Soviet intelligence networks in postwar Austria were more extensive than previously known.

The information Rainer sold to American officers in 1945 genuinely helped early CIA operations.

His betrayal of his former colleagues saved him.

But it also served a strategic purpose.

History is rarely simple.

What the discovery teaches is that not every war mystery involves heroism or tragedy.

Sometimes it’s just survival, calculated, cold, and successful.

Rainer wasn’t executed at Nuremberg.

He didn’t die fleeing through the mountains.

He didn’t escape to Argentina.

He walked into Switzerland, made himself useful, and lived quietly until his heart gave out.

For 79 years, the waterfall kept a secret.

Now we know why it took so long to find him.

He’d never really been lost.