Matters of Evidence, an exhibition and conference programme at ZKM (Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe, brought together transdisciplinary perspectives on ways of unearthing and manifesting material traces. Specifically, the conference will focus on the notion of “evidence” and procedures of substantiating truth used in a variety of disciplines and settings—such as archival, artistic and architectural research, forensics, historical and Holocaust studies, climate science, and the documentation and prosecution of violations of human rights. Nabil Ahmed presented on INTERPRT’s investigation and project, Race and Forest.

One of the first and only attempts at criminal prosecutions for wartime environmental destruction date from the period of the Second World War. This is the untold story of a legal case filed by Poland against Germany in 1947 where Polish prosecutors laid out a novel case (numbered as 1307) at the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) against foresters and high-ranking officers of the General Government. Race and Forest, INTERPRT’s exhibition for the first time reconstructed case 1307 and extended the original investigation to look at how forests were used to hide the evidence of mass murder in Chelmno – Nazi Germany’s first extermination camp. Not only does the project shed light on a crucial but under-researched historical case around the history of international justice, and the ecologies of the Holocaust. But also, in a global context it sets a precedence on the matters of evidence in prosecuting contemporary wartime environmental destruction and their links to international crimes and the far-right.