Detecting in Poland

[polska]

Greetings all,

I have some family that I occasionally visit about 40km outside of Warsaw. They live by a public forest in which there was a lot of activity during ww2. During the summer, we hunt for mushrooms. I know there are plenty of items to be found here because I still see numerous areas where there were trenches. I have even spotted rusted grenades on the forest floor from time to time.

As a beginner I have several questions:

1. What are the laws for detecting and digging in Poland? I did not see any listing of laws relating to Poland in the pinned thread above.
2. I am particularly interested in items such as firearms, bayonetts, knives, daggers, coins, medals, etc. Anything except explosives. Are there particular methods and detectors to be used to avoid digging up explosives?
3. Anybody here from Poland?

Best,
Artur

[WW2Hunter]

Hey Artur,
diggin-up explosives comes with the territory of battlefield diggin.
Always be carefull when diggin on a battlefield, UXO's, mines, grenades, cartridges are one of the most common things to find, you can't avoid them, but if you find any, notifying the relevant authority is the best thing to do.
Thats what makes every little personal item so prescious to us diggers, because they are a lot more scares than the rest.
There are a lot of good detectors and brands around, you will have to shop around.
Don't go and spend a 1000 euro's on a detector if you are a novice, you can find a good one for around 200 to 400 euro's.
For the law part there are some people here who might know what you're looking for.
Regards,
Steven

[Paul D]

Artur i must admit we haven't had any input from Polish diggers as to the legal situation in Poland , as i'm sure you are aware digging in Poland is very commen but as to the legality of much of it i don't know hopefully someone will respond with the information you require,

cheers

Paul

[kylesbullets]

Not certain on this but i think it is illegal. I checked a few websites ands they all stated the same.

[Cenowski]

I'm pretty sure that as private land goes you can detect there, but everywhere else you need permission from the local authorities to keep legal, however people have been doing it for years in mass. I think it depends more on the morals of the digger, anything of major importance should be reported or handed in, any other items(german,soviet) are deemed of non important value to Polish History, the state or remembrance.

There are a few magazines and forums dedicated to metal detecting. One magazine s even dedicated to german death tags as so many can be found around.

[StefanM]

The Polish law on protecting any site from unauthorised and unregulated digging is quite clear please see:

Laws pertaining to Metal Detecting.

I posted a link to the actual governing act, in Polish, which can be found in another thread.

However, of course there is a great deal of illegal digging in Poland in spite of the existing laws and prohibitions.