They were discovered by amateur archaeologists who would never, ever have thought of exhuming finds as important as they were disturbing. They unearthed five human skeletons without hands and feet beneath the former home of Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring, in the military headquarters, Hitler’s “Wolf’s Lair”, in what is now Poland. The remains, believed to be of a family, were discovered as part of an excavation at the site near the north-eastern town of Kętrzyn, where Nazi leaders spent much of the Second World War.
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The skeletons buried under the house of the Nazi leader
The chilling find, first reported by Der Spiegel, is shrouded in mystery: the identity of the victims, the circumstances of their burial and the possibility that the Reichsmarschall knew the bones were there while he lived in the house.
We find ourselves in front of an imposing brick building, located on a stretch of wooded moorland near the former Nazi Wolfsschanze. Before the team of German and Polish history enthusiasts got to work, the house had been extensively researched. It was already considered a place of attention, pilgrimages, specific and often morbid studies, without any historical or cognitive purpose. This site attracts more than 200,000 visitors per year. Oktavian Bartoszewski, editor of the magazine Relikte der Geschichte (Relics of History), said the Fundacja Latebra team, based in Gdańsk, had been working on the site for years, often finding mundane household objects such as crockery and utensils.
With the rise of an ambiguous type of tourism, Fundacja Latebra is one of the few organizations that had explicit permission to conduct archaeological research in the Wolf’s Den.
Bartoszewski said the team was “completely shocked” when, in February, they discovered a skull about 10cm deep while searching for a wooden floor buried in the house, which burned down in 1945. After the discovery, the team immediately notified the local police.
Under Göring’s house five skeletons without hands and feet, including that of a child
The excavations, once completed, revealed five skeletons, which according to subsequent analysis were three adults, an adolescent and a child. “It was the most horrible thing we found,” Bartoszewski said of the newborn. “They were all lying next to each other, facing the same direction.”
None had any traces of clothing or other personal items, meaning the corpses were probably stripped before being placed there. While it is possible that the bones of the hands and feet – thinner than other remains – simply decayed, it cannot be ruled out that they were amputated.
Speculation abounds as to whether Goring was aware of whether the bodies were buried under his accommodation or whether they were stored there after the war. German media said the family may have been victims of mass murder, possibly but not necessarily carried out by the Nazis.
What was the Wolf’s Den for?
Senior Nazi leaders, including Hitler and Göring, but also Martin Bormann, Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl, used the Wolf’s Den as an isolated and well-protected compound in which to plan military campaigns and the atrocities of the Holocaust.
Hitler spent more time in the Wolf’s Den than anywhere else during the war. It was the site of the failed coup of July 20, 1944, in which Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a German count, placed a briefcase containing a bomb under an oak table in a botched attempt to assassinate the Führer.
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Who is Göring
Göring, Hitler’s deputy and heir apparent and head of the Luftwaffe, was the highest-ranking Nazi official to be tried at Nuremberg. He killed himself with a cyanide pill in 1946, on the eve of his scheduled execution.
The Polish prosecutor’s office will now establish whether there is a connection with the mass killings of the Nazis, among whom Göring stands out as one of the most influential politicians.
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