Learning from the Present to Understand the Past: Forensic and Archaeological Approaches to Sites of the Holocaust

This paper will outline the potential for novel forensic archaeological approaches to be used to locate and search these sites in order to identify evidence of the Nazis’ crimes. It will be shown how a combination of forensic and archaeological methods has been successfully applied at a number of Holocaust sites across Europe in order to locate mass graves and other evidence of atrocity. The variety of state-of-the-art techniques and innovative methods now available will be presented and suggestions for future work will be made. In particular, proposals for a central database of Holocaust mass grave sites will be presented. Ethical working practices will also be discussed, given the need to carry out detailed scientific enquiry whilst respecting the sensitive nature of the evidence being sought.