Poland ends criminal investigation into human remains found in Hitler’s ‘Wolf’s Lair’

Polish prosecutors have said they will not open a criminal investigation into the remains of four people – including a child – found beneath a residence used by Hermann Göring in Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair bunker complex.

They say that while the remains could be dated to around World War II, it is impossible to determine the cause of death.

The discovery was made earlier this year by amateur archaeologists at Wolf’s Lair, which served as Hitler’s military headquarters on the Eastern Front during World War II. The famous failed assassination attempt against Hitler took place here in 1944 under the leadership of Claus von Stauffenberg.

The area in which the complex is located was part of German East Prussia before the war, but after border changes after the war it is now in northeastern Poland. It is a historic attraction that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.

On February 24, the Latebra Foundation, a group of history buffs who received permission to conduct archaeological work at the site, discovered the human remains beneath a house that had been used by Göring, one of the most powerful figures in Nazi Germany.

The place of discovery (Image credit: Nadleśnictwo Srokowo)

This week, the district prosecutor’s office in the nearby town of Olsztyn announced that its investigation had shown that the remains most likely belonged to four people, three of them middle-aged men and the other a child of uncertain gender.

The time of her death was “several decades ago,” spokesman Daniel Brodowski told the Polish Press Agency (PAP). However, due to the incompleteness of the remains, no cause of death could be determined.

“There were no injuries that would indicate a criminal cause of death,” Brodowski said. Therefore, prosecutors decided to close the case. The remains will now be handed over to local authorities for burial.

Last week, Zenon Piotrowicz, the head of the Srokowo Forestry District, where the Wolf’s Lair is located, announced that the public prosecutor’s office would discontinue the proceedings.

However, he said the Forest Department and the Latebra Foundation wanted to publish the story in the hope that someone would come forward with information that could “help us solve the mystery of the origin of these remains.”

In conversation with the Gazeta Wyborcza Piotrowicz said daily that he believed the bodies were buried shortly after the war. He suspected that they may have been victims of Soviet troops stationed there after the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Another possibility is that they were inadvertent victims of landmines that remained in the area for a decade after the war, Piotrowicz said. A far-fetched theory is that they were victims of some occult practice during the Nazi era.

A map of the Wolfsschanze complex, showing Göring’s house as number 33 (Source: Before My Ken/Wikimedia Commons, under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Main image source: Avi1111/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 3.0)

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written about Polish affairs for a variety of publications, including Foreign policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver And Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.