Ethical and political risks in the scientific analysis of human remains of victims of Nazi War crimes: structural vulnerability and the paradox of identification

Forensic methods are being used with increasing frequency to identify war dead. Scientific advances enable the technique to be applied to older historic conflicts. Identification of war dead can support mourning and commemoration. However, these approaches are not value-neutral tools. They are historically embedded in the detection of difference, the determination of group membership and racialized identities. DNA testing may be used to establish the individual identity of a set of human remains, primarily by obtaining a match with a close relative. Alternatively, it may be used to determine the likely ancestral population that the individual is descended from, using phylogeographic approaches. These scientific approaches engender disparities in the way categories of dead are conceptualized and constructed, and disparities in the kind of mourning and commemoration afforded to the dead. This paper examines the ongoing search for ‘disavowed soldiers’ in Poland and the concomitant phylogeographic testing of skeletons recovered from the Sobibór extermination camp, and the detention centre at Białystok, both sites of mass killing in Nazi-occupied Poland. The ethical and political problems with biologically delineating categories of ethnic and racial identity in this highly charged historical and commemorative context will be explored.