Użytkowanie i ochrona Puszczy Białowieskiej w okresie II wojny światowej w świetle wybranych źródeł historycznych, kartograficznych i archeologicznych = Use and protection of the Białowieża Forest during World War II in the light of selected historical, cartographic and archaeological sources

Abstract

During the Second World War, the area of what is today the Białowieża/Belovezhskaya Forest was first controlled by the Soviet Union (in the face of its incursion into Poland in the years 1939‑1941) and then under German Occupation (in the years 1941‑1944). The management of the Forest’s resources during that period has remained one of the lesser-known aspects of this renowned site’s history, hence the justification for the present article considering the scope of exploitation and protection of the Białowieża Forest during the War, on the basis of newly-identified documentation, as well as the results of remote sensing and archaeological resources. In the process, this article is also in a position to address the cognitive potential of sources of these kinds; and there is an expounding of the usefulness of interdisciplinary research when it comes to expanding and fleshing out knowledge of the impacts WW II exerted on the Forest. In the event, our analysis reveals rather similar approaches to the protection and exploitation of the Forest under both Occupants. During the Soviet Occupation, scientists’ efforts at protection could not prevent stands from being exploited at an intensity equivalent to at least 2.5 times the annual increment of wood, even if examples of plunder-felling are left aside. With the arrival of the Germans, the Forest was granted a status as a Third Reich State Hunting District whose consequence was displacement of most inhabitants, but stands were anyway exploited at an intensity equivalent to more than 1.5 times the annual increment of wood – if most probably by way of sanitation cutting alone. A valuable result of studying documentation from the State Archives of the Russian Federation is the way this reveals the aforementioned efforts by nature-conservation institutions and scientists from the USSR to protect the Forest – in the face of intensive utilisation ordered by the authorities of the BSSR and the USSR. Associated data, especially cartographic in nature, combined with the results of remote sensing and archaeological resources to permit development of a historical or archaeological GIS (H-GIS or A-GIS), with this constituting the first spatial database of its type providing for further research into this Forest’s history. The diagnosis further helped indicate areas worthy of future cognitive exploration. Of particular relevance here are changes in the spatial structure of forest reflecting felling by both Occupants; changes in settlement structure resulting from the displacement action followed by post-War re-colonisation of destroyed villages; and identified sites of hostilities. Postulates of the kind set here proved pursuable thanks to a combined analysis of textual, cartographic, remote-sensing and archaeological materials. Of equal further value might be large-scale field survey, e.g. using geophysical methods; as this would serve to augment the inventory of traces of armed conflicts, adding detail to what the authors were able to determine from the research in the state archives of Germany, Russia and Belarus, as well as in the Polish resources of the Archives of New Records and Central Military Archives. Together, such activity has allowed and will allow for a more accurate recognition of the transformations taking place in the Białowieża/ Belovezhskaya Forest during World War II.