Metal Detecting Holidays with a Difference in Poland Soon?

Just as in England the liberal laws on metal detecting have led to a burgeoning of commercial artefact hunting rallies, firms offering pay-to-dig opportunities all over the country, and metal detecting holidays for would-be artefact hunters from countries like France with different legislation (o the US with a lack of diggable desirable cultural property), so Poland's proposed liberalisation makes all sorts of money-making opportunities available to the entrepreneur. And one cannot fault Poles on their entrepreneurial abilities.  

The key is to find something you have that nobody else does. This something will have to be topical, and with an element of mystery and discovery. And I am sure I am not the only one that can put together a knowledge of what one can find here with a metal detector if you know where to look with a close look at the wording of this proposed new law... They will also be aware of the huge growth in foreign contexts of interest in books like the products of authors like  Heather Morris (The Tattooist of Auschwitz), John Boyne (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) and other recent Holocaust fiction, but also the efforts of the Holocaust deniers to get their views across.

It seems to me pretty obvious that among the adventurers who will be drawn to Poland by people wanting to cash in (and how!) on the new laws will be those eager to leaarn for themselves "the truth" of the Holocaust, to experience it for themselves.

There are forest glades that metal detectorists know where an unmapped dirt road led in the 1940s. It was here that in the last phases of the War the Germancs carted cremated and crushed ashes excavated from pits in the camps and scattered them where, they thought, nobody would find them. Standing in these glades, you feel a chill looking at the leaves beneath your feet and the cold damp winds blowing through the trees making them rustle evokes feelings difficult to describe. Driving along the damp muddy forest roads to these spots brings all sorts of reflections... I know from anecdotal evidence that searching these scatters (in which, I am told, such are the soil conditions, there are no visible human remains) produces all sorts of small metal objects that somehow escaped scrutiny before the cremation, small items of personal jewellery and ... gold tooth fillings. Now these are neither the worst or most horrifying of the Dark Heritage sites with which the dark forests of Poland are covered, but unlike some (most? - 75 years after this War, we are still discovering more), these sites are not "evidenced" on any archaeological maps. neither are they "registered" or fall into the definition of a "cemetery". So, through a loophole in the law [written by Polish politicians who've clearly no idea what this is about] these sites are completely unprotected and now available for any kind of exploration/exploitation. Under the old law they would not have been.

                  East-central Europe ghettos 1939-45                
 Map by Nancy Cooey;

More, all over the country, in small towns there were ghettos established by the Nazis between October 1939 and July 1942. Poland's Jewish population of about 3.5 million was driven into them by the Nazi occupiers in order to confine and segregate for the purpose of persecution, terror, and exploitation. Between in early 1942 and August 1944, the ghettos were emptied into the concentration and extermination camps. 

After the liquidation of the ghettos, in some cases the ghetto buildings were then levelled, leaving empty spaces that exists sometimes to today, in other cases the emptied buildings were taken over and occupied and not a few remain in occupation today. The location of the ghettos (and still less the houses from which the Jews had been driven to them) are still not precisely defined from the documentation. This is because a lot of the latter survives fragmentarily. This means that although some ghetto areas and individual historical buildings in them are protected in Poland by one legal system or another, a large number of sites are not. Again, the wording of the new law makes them vulnerable to artefact hunting that is completely legal within the wording of that law.

The significance of this that artefact hunters can go over these abandoned site hoovering out whatever artefacts take their fancy. Some of them are now shielded from prying eyes by tree cover or being behind high fences in the grounds of some other building or institution. There the searcher will find some intriguing objects left by the deported original owners. Indeed, often Jewish families suspecting their imminent deportation, buried precious items (including ritual vessels etc) near their homes. Some of these caches have been found, many no doubt await their discoverer.  

Is it too far-fetched to expect that before long after the passing of the new law (on 1st May 2024), we will see online adverts on the pages of metal detecting interest groups on Facebook or other social media, or in the Dark Web that propose something like this?

GREBKESZ AND RUNSKI [HOLIDAYS] ARE PLEASED TO BE ABLE TO OFFER FOR SUMMER 2024:  

EXCLUSIVE HOLOCAUST-HUNTING HOLIDAYS IN POLAND

Cost: USD 3,320 per person, all inclusive. Plus air fare from your city​.

Find out the truth about the Holocaust, hands-on history, walk the shtetel in the footsteps of a lost community, understand the heritage and find a piece of the past, 

Day One (Tuesday)

Land in Warsaw airport, coach to hotel. Afternoon, bus tour of city, visit Ghetto Wall (Sienna  and Chłodna streets), Umszlagplatz, guided tour of Polin Museum. Evening get-together with Polish-Jewish cuisine. Short optional lecture on Poland and its Jews, the Nazi occupation and the Holocaust. 

Day Two (Wednesday)
Jewish district. Coach to Kraków, check in to hotel in Kazimierz district, sightseeing, old Synagogue, Holocaust memorial, Krakow by night. Film Night (Optional): "Schindler's Ark" 

Day Three (Thursday)
Short coach trip to Plaszów camp (Schindler's Ark), see the house of Amon Goth. Then 50 km Coach trip to Auschwitz and Birkenau camps. Overnight accommodation in apartments or hotel among the buildings of the SS settlement to the north of camp Auschwitz I (!). Lecture and slideshow by expert on Short optional lecture on Poland and its "Righteous Among Nations".  

Day Four (Friday)
Shtetel Day. Coach to the small town of XXXX, exploring the site of the former ghetto. Half-forgotten cobbled streets, the old synagogue, the abandoned Jewish cemetery. Visitors will have an opportunity to explore a site on private grounds where the rubble of vanished Jewish houses and remains in them just under the leaves and grass speak of a vanished way of life. It is a short coach trip from there to the hotel by the river at XXX where there will be a grill with a Jewish klezmer group singing traditional music, and an expert will be at hand to explain your finds.

Day Five (Saturday)

Forgotten ashes. A visit to the former site one of the less-known sub-camps of Operation Reinhard and a short coach ride to the forests in the vicinity where you will be able to see how the Nazis tried to hide the evidence. A local expert detectorist will point out places of interest. Back to hotel. Short optional presentation on "Holocaust Denial, followed by a discussion session on "what do you think on the basis of what you have seen"?

Day Six (Sunday)

Coach to Warsaw, and the airport.

[Groups will normally consist of 7 to 12 persons. An application fee and deposit of $500.00 per person is required to hold your spot on a trip. Deposits are non-refundable if you cancel within 90 days of the trip start date. Trip cancellation insurance is highly recommended. For those wanting immerse themselves deeper on days four and five, help will be provided to go through the formalities of filling in the Polish Ministry website registering your research - See Terms and Conditions]. 

So, in this fictional example, if the 'notification to search' required by the proposed law is made mid-day on Friday before the afternoon search, the applicants will receive an automated response and will be able to begin searching, even if the conservator wanted to visit the search site, the distance to be covered would make that impossible, the same goes for a notification made on a Saturday morning. By the time the conservator, through the system issues a decision on Mondday about any finds made, the finders and the objects will have already left the country. And the tour operator is not mentioned on the search notification (and in any case is registered in Luton, UK, outside the EU).