Five bodies without feet or hands. This is the macabre discovery made by a German-Polish team responsible for excavations in the house of the former Nazi leader, Hermann Göring.
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On February 24, one of the archaeologists decided to dig under the floor of this residence located in Gierłoż, in the north-east of Poland, and burned down at the end of the war. Below, the researchers first came across a human skull, “alongside water pipes” precise The Parisian according to an article published in the German magazine Spiegel .
Three adults, a teenager and an infant
It was from this first discovery that the police – contacted on site – were able to conclude the search with the remains of five people. The latter showed neither hands nor feet. According to forensic expertise, the skeletons were identified as those of three adults, an adolescent, and a newborn.
The media Spiegel notes that no traces of clothing or personal objects were found near the bodies, which could mean that the corpses may have been undressed before being buried. As for the absence of hands and feet, experts put forward two hypotheses: either the organs gradually decomposed due to their thinness, or the victims were amputated.
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“It’s the most horrible thing we found”
“It’s the most horrible thing we found”declared Oktavian Bartoszewski in charge of archaeological research. “They were all lying next to each other, facing the same direction”, he describes. The identities of the five bodies remain unknown, as do the circumstances in which their deaths occurred.
“An important next step will be to know the age of the remains using radiocarbon dating”says a statement from the Latebra Foundation, a historical organization based in the city of Gdansk.
The “wolf’s den” inhabited by a Hitler loyalist
Also called the “Wolfsschanze” (the wolf’s den in French), the house in which the bodies were found belonged to Adolf Hitler’s right-hand man and creator of the Gestapo, Hermann Göring. The Nazi leader was the highest-ranking Nazi official tried at the Nuremberg trials, specifies Le Parisien. The latter also committed suicide with cyanide in 1946, just before his execution.
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The “wolf’s den” also served as a hideout to orchestrate military attacks. It was in this secluded place that the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, better known as “Operation Valkyrie,” took place. The house was then destroyed in January 1945 to prevent it from falling into the hands of the advancing Soviet army.
