Forgotten Nazi Forced Labour Camps: Arbeitslager Riese (Lower Silesia, SE Poland) and the Use of Archival Aerial Photography and Contemporary LiDAR and Ground Truth Data to Identify and Delineate Camp Areas

Abstract

The “Riese” project was a huge construction project initiated by German Nazi authorities, which was located in the northeast of the Sowie Mountains (Ger. Eulengebirge) in southwestern Poland. Construction of the “Riese” complex took place in 1943–1945 but was left unfinished. Due to the lack of reliable sources, the exact intended function of the Riese complex is still unknown. The construction was carried out by prisoners, mostly Jews, from the main nearby concentration camps, KL Gross-Rosen and KL Auschwitz-Birkenau. Thanks to the discovery in the National Archives (NARA, USA) of a valuable series of German aerial photographs taken in February 1945, insight into the location of labour camps was obtained. These photographs, combined with LiDAR data from the Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography (Warsaw, Poland), allowed for the effective identification and field inspection of the camps’ remains. The location and delimitation of the selected labour camps were confirmed by an analysis of the 1945 aerial photograph combined with LiDAR data. These results were supported by field inspection as well as archival testimonies of witnesses. The field inspection of the construction remains indicated intentionally faulty construction works, which deliberately reduced the durability of the buildings and made them easy to demolish. The authors believe that it is urgent to continue the research and share the results with both the scientific community and the local community. The authors also want to emphasize that this less-known aspect of Holocaust history is gradually disappearing in social and institutional memory and is losing to the commercial mythologization of the Riese object.

Use of Geoinformatics for the Digitization and Visualization of Sensitive Space in the Urban Landscape: A Case Study of the Gross-Rosen Sub-Camps Systems

“…In order to perform a proper integration of spatial data with actual data, it was also necessary to perform an orthorectification of aerial photograph [27]. The orthorectification of the 1944 aerial photo was performed using the PCI Geomatica software (PCI Geomatica OrthoEngine, Quebec, QC, Canada) [28].…”

Airborne LiDAR in Mountain Archaeology

“…An example of a research-question-led approach is the study of the Sowie Mountains (Poland). It utilised a combination of historical aerial photographs and LiDAR data to investigate World War II forced labour camps, successfully identifying the camps (Kamola et al 2020). In a similar manner, the pre-World War II landscape of mountain villages in southern Poland was analysed.…”

German Extermination Camps on WWII Reconnaissance Photographs. Orthorectification Process for Archival Aerial Images of Cultural Heritage Sites

“…Cultural heritage sites are unique areas which should be protected, and the priority areas that require monitoring, restoration, and management should include the places related to the remembrance of the victims of WWII. The current research pays attention to the forgotten [19][20][21]: the sites of prisoners' executions, namely concentration and extermination camps.…”