Buried Treasures: Narratives of an Immigrant from Ukraine in Israel

The folklore of buried treasure is prevalent in Odessa in part because of the city’s extensive catacombs and the spelunking culture that has developed around them. As Odessa’s population moved across the world, its stories of buried treasure emigrated also. This paper comparatively analyzes three stories of buried treasure in Odessa and other parts of Ukraine, as recounted by an émigré to Israel. In none of them was a treasure actually found (for a discussion on stories of unfound treasures in Mexican as opposed to American folklore see Arora 1987 and Dundes 1971).