The new website aims to promote research and education on forgotten sites of Nazi crimes.

The German Historical Institute Warsaw has published an interactive map showing the locations of Holocaust mass graves within Polish territory occupied by Germany during the Second World War (the former General Government). The website is the result of three years of interdisciplinary research and is aimed at both specialists and the general public. The site has been built using an extensive database of Holocaust-related sites that are often overlooked, as historical education typically focuses on commemorating the concentration and extermination camps, as well as the ghettos in major cities. The new website brings together historical information, aerial photographs and maps in a manner that is unique in Holocaust research to date.

The map is the result of the “Holocaust Mass Graves” project, which focuses in particular on the events surrounding “Operation Reinhardt”. As part of this operation, the Germans deported around 1.6 million Jews to the camps at Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka. However, it encompassed not only killings in the extermination camps, but also mass shootings in which around a quarter of all victims of the so-called “Holocaust by bullets” lost their lives. People were murdered in their home towns: in towns and villages of all sizes, or on the outskirts of these settlements. The exact number of victims is unknown.

The project team includes researchers from the fields of history, sociology, cultural studies, archaeology and dendrology. The team focused on the area of present-day Poland that constituted the General Government during the German occupation, with special emphasis on the Subcarpathian Voivodeship. The project examined the history of the mass graves and the memory surrounding them. The map, which has now been published, allows users to search by locality, number of victims, and whether the graves are within an existing Jewish cemetery.

Over the coming years, further information will be added to the map. Further initiatives are planned involving schools, extracurricular education, and the tourism sector.

The project is supported by the EVZ Foundation, the ZEIT-Bucerius Foundation and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.