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mechanisms of the “dispersed Holocaust” within the General Government. It also seeks to provide in-depth studies of the history of selected sites, and to examine various aspects of the memory of these events and their impact on local communities and surroundings.
In cooperation with specialists from the Department of Historical Atlas at the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, an interactive map of mass grave sites was developed. The primary source of data used to create it was the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. However, many locations were added or verified based on other databases and archival sources, as well as through site visits. Each point on our map marks the approximate location of a mass grave.
Naturally, we cannot be certain of the exact location of all the mass graves. The mere presence of a monument or other form of commemoration is not sufficient confirmation of their position. When memorials were built after the war, those building them most frequently relied on witness accounts. However, because the testimonies were given several, or sometimes even dozens of years after the war, they did not allow for a precise pinpointing of where the victims lay. In some areas, exhumations were carried out in the early postwar years to determine the number of those murdered and the exact location of the grave. These efforts, though problematic from the perspective of Jewish law (Halakha), which requires that the remains of the dead be left undisturbed, were permitted at the time. Today, such work is in practice almost impossible due to the stance of the Rabbinic Commission for Cemeteries. At the same time, determining the boundaries of a mass grave as precisely as possible is also important from the standpoint of Halakha, as it is a fundamental prerequisite for the effective protection of the remains within it.
In our work, we are aware of both the complexity of this issue and the responsibility involved in assigning a specific location to each point on the map. It is also worth emphasizing that, in addition to the places included on the map, there are many unmarked locations where the remains of Holocaust victims lie. In Poland, their precise identification, using non-invasive research methods, is carried out by the Zapomniane Foundation. Research projects on this subject have also been conducted by the team from the Research Center for Memory Cultures at the Faculty of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University, among others.
The description of each site on the map contains the basic known information regarding its history and commemoration. All locations can be displayed against the background of a contemporary map, as well as historical topographic maps, both prewar and postwar. Users can also overlay wartime and postwar administrative boundaries, along with a railway network layer. For selected locations—which at the current stage of the project mainly cover today’s southeastern Poland, where the research team conducted fieldwork—we also provide supplementary materials such as archival sources and aerial photographs taken in 1944 and in the 1950s.
Our research focuses both on the course of the executions and their logistics, including the involvement of local actors—such as the “Blue” Police, the Building Service (Baudienst), and forest administration—as well as non-Jewish witnesses and their memory of these events. Wherever possible, we also try to reconstruct the stories of the victims, using materials created by Survivors. A very important component of the project is also the history of how individual sites were commemorated, as their fates proved to be highly diverse and shaped by numerous local factors.
Although the primary outcome of the project—the interactive map—is digital in nature, visiting the memorial sites holds immense value for our research. Each visit is preceded by archival research and an analysis of the relevant literature, but it is only the confrontation with the actual physical space that allows us to better understand the information contained in the sources. However, this does not mean that all doubts are resolved.
Reconstructing the history of these places heavily relies on human memory, which is imprecise by nature. We use both archival materials relating to the crimes themselves and documentation connected with later commemorations. In the first group, particularly important are the questionnaires of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German/Nazi Crimes, which gathered information about executions after the war, as well as eyewitness testimonies. One of the project partners is the Yahad-In Unum foundation, which collects accounts from non-Jewish witnesses to these crimes.
The second category of archival sources we analyze consists of records produced by state and local administration, as well as by individuals and institutions that initiated commemorations. We collect documentation concerning the exhumation of victims, the securing of mass graves, the construction and renovation of monuments, and anniversary observances. Gathering these often scattered archival files requires time-consuming research conducted across many institutions. We are glad that we can make selected results available to the map’s users. Documents for which we hold the appropriate publishing rights are accessible in PDF format on the web pages devoted to individual sites.
From the outset, we wanted the project to be genuinely interdisciplinary. Our team includes historians, cultural studies scholars, sociologists, archaeologists, and dendrologists. This allows us to analyze mass grave sites from different perspectives. We use aerial photographs, study environmental conditions, examine the impact of mass graves on the surrounding vegetation, and incorporate data from the Digital Terrain Model (LiDAR), which helps identify traces of past events preserved in the landscape.
mechanisms of the “dispersed Holocaust” within the General Government. It also seeks to provide in-depth studies of the history of selected sites, and to examine various aspects of the memory of these events and their impact on local communities and surroundings.
In cooperation with specialists from the Department of Historical Atlas at the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, an interactive map of mass grave sites was developed. The primary source of data used to create it was the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. However, many locations were added or verified based on other databases and archival sources, as well as through site visits. Each point on our map marks the approximate location of a mass grave.
Naturally, we cannot be certain of the exact location of all the mass graves. The mere presence of a monument or other form of commemoration is not sufficient confirmation of their position. When memorials were built after the war, those building them most frequently relied on witness accounts. However, because the testimonies were given several, or sometimes even dozens of years after the war, they did not allow for a precise pinpointing of where the victims lay. In some areas, exhumations were carried out in the early postwar years to determine the number of those murdered and the exact location of the grave. These efforts, though problematic from the perspective of Jewish law (Halakha), which requires that the remains of the dead be left undisturbed, were permitted at the time. Today, such work is in practice almost impossible due to the stance of the Rabbinic Commission for Cemeteries. At the same time, determining the boundaries of a mass grave as precisely as possible is also important from the standpoint of Halakha, as it is a fundamental prerequisite for the effective protection of the remains within it.
In our work, we are aware of both the complexity of this issue and the responsibility involved in assigning a specific location to each point on the map. It is also worth emphasizing that, in addition to the places included on the map, there are many unmarked locations where the remains of Holocaust victims lie. In Poland, their precise identification, using non-invasive research methods, is carried out by the Zapomniane Foundation. Research projects on this subject have also been conducted by the team from the Research Center for Memory Cultures at the Faculty of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University, among others.
The description of each site on the map contains the basic known information regarding its history and commemoration. All locations can be displayed against the background of a contemporary map, as well as historical topographic maps, both prewar and postwar. Users can also overlay wartime and postwar administrative boundaries, along with a railway network layer. For selected locations—which at the current stage of the project mainly cover today’s southeastern Poland, where the research team conducted fieldwork—we also provide supplementary materials such as archival sources and aerial photographs taken in 1944 and in the 1950s.
Our research focuses both on the course of the executions and their logistics, including the involvement of local actors—such as the “Blue” Police, the Building Service (Baudienst), and forest administration—as well as non-Jewish witnesses and their memory of these events. Wherever possible, we also try to reconstruct the stories of the victims, using materials created by Survivors. A very important component of the project is also the history of how individual sites were commemorated, as their fates proved to be highly diverse and shaped by numerous local factors.
Although the primary outcome of the project—the interactive map—is digital in nature, visiting the memorial sites holds immense value for our research. Each visit is preceded by archival research and an analysis of the relevant literature, but it is only the confrontation with the actual physical space that allows us to better understand the information contained in the sources. However, this does not mean that all doubts are resolved.
Reconstructing the history of these places heavily relies on human memory, which is imprecise by nature. We use both archival materials relating to the crimes themselves and documentation connected with later commemorations. In the first group, particularly important are the questionnaires of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German/Nazi Crimes, which gathered information about executions after the war, as well as eyewitness testimonies. One of the project partners is the Yahad-In Unum foundation, which collects accounts from non-Jewish witnesses to these crimes.
The second category of archival sources we analyze consists of records produced by state and local administration, as well as by individuals and institutions that initiated commemorations. We collect documentation concerning the exhumation of victims, the securing of mass graves, the construction and renovation of monuments, and anniversary observances. Gathering these often scattered archival files requires time-consuming research conducted across many institutions. We are glad that we can make selected results available to the map’s users. Documents for which we hold the appropriate publishing rights are accessible in PDF format on the web pages devoted to individual sites.
From the outset, we wanted the project to be genuinely interdisciplinary. Our team includes historians, cultural studies scholars, sociologists, archaeologists, and dendrologists. This allows us to analyze mass grave sites from different perspectives. We use aerial photographs, study environmental conditions, examine the impact of mass graves on the surrounding vegetation, and incorporate data from the Digital Terrain Model (LiDAR), which helps identify traces of past events preserved in the landscape.