Archeologists in Poland excavating the former home of a Nazi leader and war criminal, Hermann Göring, unearthed five human skeletons missing their hands and feet.
The team of Gdańsk-based archeologists, Fundacja Latebra, is one of a few organizations allowed to conduct research at the site known as the Wolf’s Lair, a popular tourist destination.
In a video posted by the publisher of Relikte der Geschichte, Oktavian Bartoszewski, the team detailed their grim findings. Just inches underground, under the floorboards of Göring’s home, the group first found a human skull.
After further investigating the area, the group turned up five skeletons, including three adults, a teenager, and a baby. The team did not find any remains of clothing or accessories, suggesting the bodies were naked when buried.
In conversation with Der Spiegel, Mr. Bartoszewski said he thinks the bodies were buried there after the home was built, adding that otherwise the builders would have unearthed them themselves.
“Those who laid the pipes should have discovered the human remains,” Mr. Bartoszewski said. “We were completely shocked.”
Responding to the find, Polish police said that they found no evidence of a recent crime at the site, further suggesting that the bodies had been buried there before the end of World War II.
The Wolf’s Lair compound consists of some 200 buildings that served as one of the führer’s most common hideouts in Poland during the war. It was also the site of an assassination attempt on the German leader, Adolf Hitler, in 1944.
In the video, Mr. Bartozewski said that the baby’s skeleton was the “most horrible thing we found,” according to a translation by the Guardian.
Since the find, speculation has swirled about whether the hand and foot bones were lost due to being smaller than the rest of the skeletons or whether they were amputated before the bodies were buried.
It’s also not clear whether Göring was aware that there were bodies buried under his home and whether he had a direct role in the deaths of the five people buried there.
Göring, one of the powerful Nazis in Hitler’s inner circle, was the commander of the German air force, or Luftwaffe. Captured at the end of the war, he was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to death by hanging. He killed himself using cyanide spirited into his cell the night before his execution.
