Search

The search for invisible and clandestine burial places of victims of wars and totalitarian crimes is a very difficult task. Research and exhumation teams use various methods to help locate burial places. According to the experience of our team, one of the best sources of information about burials are archival and contemporary aerial photographs. During World War II, aerial photography became one of the most important tools for warfare reconnaissance. For this reason, huge numbers of aerial photographs are currently available, in which the victim’s burial sites have been accidentally recorded. Aerial photographs are often helpful not in the direct identification of graves, but in the reconstruction of topographies of individual objects within a defined period of time, and thus, indirectly, in the location of graves. The aim of the study was to demonstrate the usefulness of historical aerial, satellite and drone photographs in the process of searching for the remains of victims of armed conflicts and totalitarian crimes. The paper presents the experience gained in the course of research projects carried out.