The museum’s unarmed security guards watched the heist unfold. Under strict orders not to engage with the intruders, all they could do was call the police and monitor the thieves on grainy security footage from a nearby room. In eight chaotic minutes, it was over.
Around 5 a.m. on Nov. 25, 2019, the thieves set fire to a circuit breaker directly across the street from their target. The fire disabled the alarm system, turned off the surrounding streetlights and cut all power to the Grünes Gewölbe museum − the Green Vault in Dresden, Germany − plunging the whole area into darkness.
Moments later, two black-clad hooded figures emerged from the shadows and sprinted toward a small window on the museum's ground floor with an iron grille over it. Days earlier, the thieves had used a hydraulic tool to cut through a large section of the iron bars and then reattached them with glue to avoid suspicion. On the night of the heist itself, they used a small ax to smash through the window and crawl inside. Using flashlights to light their way, they headed straight to display cases housing one of Europe's largest collections of fine art, historic jewels and artifact treasures with priceless cultural value.
