Picture of a mass
grave: Execution site
of Jewish refugees
in Ladozhskaya,
Krasnodar region,
Russia
© Markel Redondo/Yahad-In Unum.
yom hashoah »
Father Patrick
Desbois, author of
Holocaust By Bullets
and founder/
president of Yahad-
In Unum
Documenting Mass Murder
Priest works to identify unknown Holocaust gravesites.
Judy Greenwald | Contributing Writer
T
here’s been much written about the
Holocaust — and very rightly so.
We’re painfully familiar with the
knowledge that 6 million Jews and over-
whelming numbers of others perished in
Nazi death camps.
But for those millions of innocents
executed in cities, small villages, even their
own neighborhoods, there was little or no
documentation of the sites where such hor-
rors took place.
Since 2001, it’s been the mission of French
priest Father Patrick Desbois to identify and
memorialize these sites before they are lost
to time.
Desbois, born in 1955 in Chalon-sur-
Saone, holds a degree in mathematics from
the Universite de Dijon and earned a mas-
ter’s in theology from the Catholic University
of Lyon. He was ordained in 1986 and has
worked as a teacher in Africa, assisted
Mother Teresa in Calcutta, served as supe-
rior of the Grand Seminary of Prado in Lyon,
and was secretary of Jewish Relations for
French Cardinals Decourtray, Jean Balland
and Louis-Marie Bille. He has been recog-
nized with honorary doctorates from such
institutions as Bar-Ilan University, New York
University, the University of Winnipeg and
the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
He now serves as director of the Episcopal
Committee for Catholic-Jewish Relations
under the auspices of the French Conference
of Bishops. He also acts as adviser to
the Vatican on the Jewish religion and,
since 2015, has been adjunct professor
at the Program for Jewish Civilization in
Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh
40 May 5 • 2016
School of Foreign Service.
Desbois has dedicated his life to research-
ing the Holocaust and, in 2004, he founded
Yahad-In Unum (“together” in Hebrew and
Latin), a global humanitarian organization
based in Paris that works to both further
Catholic-Jewish relations and locate and
commemorate the sites of Jewish as well as
Roma (“gypsy”) mass executions. For this
important work documenting the Holocaust,
Desbois was awarded the Legion of Honor,
France’s highest honor, in 2008.
In that same year, Desbois wrote Holocaust
By Bullets, which details his accounts of dis-
covering the gravesites of Jewish victims exe-
cuted in the Ukraine by the Einsatzgruppen,
the Nazi mobile death squads. The book
garnered the Jewish Book Council’s 2008
National Jewish Book Award. His story was
also a featured segment — “The Hidden
Holocaust” — on CBS’s 60 Minutes, which
aired in 2015, and told with heart-wrenching
detail of his years of work interviewing wit-
nesses, poring over countless documents and
painstakingly investigating and discovering
thousands of killing sites of Jews and Romas.
The grandson of a WWII French sol-
dier held as a prisoner in the Rawa-Ruska
labor camp on the Poland-Ukraine border,
Desbois explained his motivation in under-
taking this overwhelming and difficult task.
“My grandfather was a witness to the
shootings of the Jews and Romas,” Desbois
explained. “But he never wanted to talk
about it. I think, through my grandfather,
God called me to build Yahad-In Unum,
together with Marco Gonzalez [YIU’s direc-
tor]. I work to bring proof of these assassina-
tions to the world so history does not die
with the witnesses.”
Desbois’ interest in the Holocaust led to
his studying about anti-Semitism at Yad
Vashem and also learning about Jewish
religion and culture from a leader of France’s
Jewish community. According to Bob
Aronson, senior development adviser at the
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit,
who has worked with Desbois for the past
year and a half, Desbois’ being a priest
helped those he found and questioned be
more forthcoming in their accounts.
Aronson noted that people of many differ-
ent backgrounds make up the forensic team
that travels with Desbois to locate these sites
and interview the ever-dwindling number of
eyewitnesses to these murders.
“Time is running out for the father,”
Aronson noted. “The people who remember,
who can take him and his team to these
sites, are dying off. It’s an honor for me to
work with Father Desbois. Through his
dedication, he’s identifying the victims of
these shootings, who have no survivors. He’s
giving the Jewish people a chance to say
Kaddish for them.”
Andrew Echt, COO of Arbor Investments,
spent time working with Father Desbois and
his team during several of their past visits to
Detroit.
“I felt compelled to assist Yahad’s efforts
in building awareness and support for this
historically important and noble cause,” Echt
explained. “Father Desbois stands as one of
the righteous among the nations, and we
have the opportunity to ensure that his mis-
sion — which is our mission — is fulfilled.”
Desbois’ passion for historical education
is continuing. He has written a book about
ISIS as a terrorist industry and noted a
second book about the Holocaust is in the
works.
“The assassins never imagined that 70
years later, men and women motivated by a
quest for the truth would interview eyewit-
nesses to the killings of Jews and Romas,” he
said. “To all those who commit genocide we
say: Sooner or later, wherever mass murder
of humans has taken place, someone will
return.”
An important aspect of Desbois’ and
YIU’s educational task is the “Holocaust By
Bullets” exhibit, showcasing their revelation
of the process of Eastern European Jewish
genocide, which has been presented in Paris,
New York, Los Angeles, Canada, Madrid,
Lithuania and recently in Guatemala. It will
be in Michigan this June.
“All faiths must act together to improve
the world,” Desbois concluded. “New gen-
erations are waiting for action!”
“I am moved by the work Father Desbois
is doing to expose those murdered in the
Holocaust, not in camps or ghettos, but
by bullets,” said Robin Axelrod, Holocaust
Memorial Center’s director of education.
“He’s showing the world a largely
unknown chapter of the Holocaust in order
to identify those who perished and make us
recognize and denounce the ongoing epi-
demic of global genocide. We must learn the
dangers of unrivaled hatred and make the
The “Holocaust By Bullets” exhibit will be at
the Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman
Family Campus in Farmington Hills June 5
through December. Call (248) 553-2400 or
visit info@holocaustcenter.org for details.