Mystery over skeletons with hands and feet missing found at Hitler’s lair
'Were they some occult rituals of Third Reich fanatics?'
Why human skeletons all missing their hands and feet were found in a bunker complex once used by Adolf Hitler may never be solved, experts say.
The remains were found in February at Wolf’s Lair, the villa of the Führer’s heir and deputy Hermann Göring, in Gierłoż northeastern Poland.
Hitler’s inner circle spent large stretches of World War Two at the secret complex, which spans 200 bunkers, military barracks and even a rail station – now it’s a popular tourist spot.
Buried inside an old home, however, were the bones of three adults, a teenager and a baby.
Local excavators found a skull about 10cm underground in February before alerting police.
Months on, police have accepted that the world may never know the identity of the victims, how they died and whether Nazi military officials knew of the skeletons while they lived there.
The spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in nearby Ketrzyn, Daniel Brodowski, told the Associated Press an investigation into the skeletons was dropped in March.
A forensic investigation was carried out to establish if manslaughter had occurred.
However, experts came up short because of how decayed the remains are given how many decades old they are, making it impossible to determine cause of death.
Brodowski added: ‘The expert stated that the preserved bone remains were of human origin and came from at least four people, three of whom were most likely middle-aged men, and the fourth was a child several years of age whose sex cannot be determined.’
None of the bodies had traces of clothing or other personal objects, suggesting the corpses were stripped before being placed.
The Wolf’s Lair has been home not only to Hitler and Göring but the dictator’s private secretary Martin Bormann, armed forces chief Wilhelm Keitel and general Alfred Jodl.
Inside the complex hidden deep in the forest of Gierloz, the men would plan military campaigns as well as the horrors of the Holocaust.
The 20 July plot, an assassin attempt against the Führer, unfolded inside the base.
It saw German count Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg plant a bomb inside a suitcase under a conference table. The bomb was moved at the last minute, however, with the blast only giving Hitler a perforated eardrum and slightly singed trousers.
Amateur archaeologists from the Gdańsk-based team Fundacja Latebra had combed Wolf’s Lair for years, usually turning up a few pieces of crockery.
Then while looking for buried wooden flooring in a home on the site, they found the bones.
Latebra member Dominik Markiewicz told Reuters: ‘You’d never expect such things in such a place as it was… the most guarded place in the Third Reich and after the war, the Russians took over this place
‘Everyone wondered what might have happened there … We tried to think of something, but nothing reasonable comes to mind.
‘We didn’t know what we were dealing with at all. Were they some occult rituals of Third Reich fanatics? We have no idea.’
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