This site, once a villa belonging to Nazi Party leader Hermann Göring, is part of Adolf Hitler's secret military headquarters, known as Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair).
The Wolf's Lair, abandoned after a failed assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944, was partially destroyed by the retreating German forces at the end of the Second World War.
The Latebra Foundation, which has been exploring the Toca do Lobo with official authorization for several years, discovered the remains of three adults, an older child and a baby. These bodies were found just below what would have been the floor of Göring's villa. Göring, the commander of the German air force, was appointed by Hitler in 1939 as his successor.
"Everyone wondered what could have happened there," said Dominik Markiewicz of the Latebra Foundation, quoted by Popular Mechanics. "We tried to think of something, but nothing reasonable came to mind. Could it have been the occult rituals of Third Reich fanatics? We have no idea."
Although the case has been closed without conclusive answers, a new report offers some clues as to the origin of the bodies.
The bodies were found in a place that was closed to the public for almost 50 years after the Second World War. The Nazis themselves inflicted significant damage on Toca do Lobo to prevent it from falling into Soviet hands. Hitler ordered its destruction shortly after his last visit, in November 1944, and the demolition took place at the end of January 1945, when the Soviets launched the Vistula-Oder offensive.
When the Soviets captured Toca do Lobo on the same day they liberated Auschwitz, they did so without firing a shot. Under Soviet control, the site fell into disuse and was closed to exploration. Only after the collapse of communism in Poland in 1990 did the public have access to the site.
The Wolf's Lair was a strategic center for the Nazi leadership during its campaign against the Soviet Union. The most famous act of violence was an assassination attempt on Hitler by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg on July 20, 1944.
Michael Natale
The identities of the five people buried under Göring's villa remain a mystery. A National Geographic report provides some clues: a coroner suggests that the skeletons date from the "interwar" years, between 1918 and 1939, and their poor condition makes it impossible to determine the causes of death. This implies that the bodies may have been buried before the construction of the Toca do Lobo, which was completed in June 1941.
Some speculate about a sacrificial ritual, since prominent Nazis such as Heinrich Himmler were known to engage in occult practices. The nearby belemnites, stones sometimes used in pagan burials as "good luck charms", contribute to this theory. However, belemnites occur naturally in the area, which makes definitive conclusions difficult.
The Latebra Foundation plans to carry out radiocarbon dating to determine the time of death more precisely, which could narrow the date down to a few years.
