German Extermination Camps on WWII Reconnaissance Photographs. Orthorectification Process for Archival Aerial Images of Cultural Heritage Sites

Abstract

Aerial photographs taken over the past 80 years are often the only record of topography and events that have been destroyed or obliterated. However, the lack of camera certificates for many historical photographs, and their physical degradation, often makes it challenging to correct them geometrically. In this paper, we present the process of orthorectifying archival Luftwaffe aerial photographs of the area of the Treblinka extermination camp from May 1944, based on a computer vision-based process and preprocessing techniques. Low-cost and easily accessible software was used, which allowed for the generation of a fully metric orthophotomap in a repeatable and accurate way. This process can be repeated for archival aerial photographs from other dates (for the Treblinka camp) and other extermination camps (Belzec and Sobibor).