IFOR DUNCAN: DROUGHT IN THE RIVERS OF FORGETTING: THE WISŁA, SOŁA, PRZEMSZA RIVERS AND THE LEGACIES OF GENOCIDE
In the summer of 2015 central Europe experienced a drought that led major rivers such as the Wisła to recede to their lowest levels for centuries. The result of anthropogenic climate change, the drought, inline with a 60 year trend in lowering summer river levels, performed an unexpected archaeology. This paper considers how the traces from the crematoria, scattered by the Sonderkommando in the Wisła and Soła rivers near Auschwitz-Birkenau, encounter the shifting materialities of the riverine site. In the reduction of remains to ash, and the pulverisation of bone and scattering into the river the very sedimentary processes of the river were appropriated through the obfuscation of the remains of genocide.