Yahad in unum
Encyclopedia
Yahad-In Unum was founded in Paris
in 2004 by leaders in the French Catholic and Jewish communities.
Its primary initiative is to locate the sites of mass grave
s of Jewish victims of the Nazi mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen
, in Ukraine
and Belarus
. YIU is led by Father Patrick Desbois
, a French Catholic Priest whose grandfather was a French soldier deported to the Nazi prison camp
Rava-Ruska
, located in a Ukrainian town that borders Poland
. Its American fundraising branch is the American Friends of Yahad-In Unum.
is the Director of the Episcopal Committee for Relations with Judaism. His work on Catholic-Jewish relations has frequently received international recognition; he has received the Légion d'honneur
from French President
Nicolas Sarkozy
and been awarded the Medal of Valor
by the Simon Wiesenthal
Center, the Roger E. Joseph Prize by Hebrew Union College
, the Humanitarian Award by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Jan Karski
Award by the American Jewish Committee
, the B'nai B'rith
International Award for Outstanding Contributions to Relations with the Jewish People and the National Jewish Book Award for his 2008 book Holocaust by Bullets (Palgrave-Macmillan). In spring 2009, he received honorary doctorates from Hebrew University and Bar Ilan.
Dr. Richard Prasquier is the Vice-President of the Yahad-In Unum Board. He is the President of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions and a member of the World Jewish Congress
and the International Jewish Committee on Inter-religious Consultations.
David Black is the President of American Friends of Yahad-In Unum. Black is the Associate Vice President for Institutional Advancement for Yeshiva University
. He is the former director of the JCC
in Manhattan and executive director
of the Alliance Francaise
in New York.
by Nazi mobile killing units, or Einsatzgruppen
. The Einsatzgruppen rounded up the Jewish populations of the villages and towns they passed through, led them to the country-side and summarily executed them. The victims were buried (many of them still alive) in mass graves. Very little is known about these atrocities because there were so few survivors.
and locate the mass graves of Jews killed by the Einsatzgruppen. YIU's objective is to counter the claims of Holocaust deniers who use the lack of official documentation of the murders to make claims about the validity of Holocaust evidence, and to account for the graves that remain undiscovered to pay respect to the dead.
YIU approaches its work on two fronts—archival research and research trips. The archival research is primarily undertaken by PhD
and graduate students
in the United States
and Germany
. The researchers spend several months at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, where they study the Soviet archives of the Extraordinary State Commission of 1944 and the archives from the Einsatzgruppen Trial
at Ludwigsburg
, Germany.
After the research is complete, an 11 person team, usually led by Patrick Desbois
, travels to Belarus and Ukraine to collect testimonial and forensic evidence
of the murders. Each trip lasts 15–20 days. The team includes a photographer, ballistics expert, translators, drivers, daily report recorders, a witness interviewer and camera operator
. During each trip, the team travels from village to village, where they interview and film the surviving eyewitnesses, using testimony of witnesses to discover the locations of the graves. Once the graves are located, the team uses high-tech equipment to obtain forensic evidence that validates the testimonies. When the team returns to Paris, the translated video testimony and the physical evidence is archived.
published Holocaust By Bullets, written by Father Desbois about the work of YIU. Father Desbois titled the book after the method the Nazis used to kill their victims. The Jewish Book Council
awarded the book the 2008 National Jewish Book Award.
and Poland
. They also plan to open a unique research center in Paris, which will feature a unique archival resource center, and the new results from Father Desbois' field research
, including video testimonies and artifacts.
In addition, YIU is planning to bring a special touring exhibit to schools in Ukraine. YIU will also continue the global tour of its educational exhibits, which include trainings and public education
programs. Finally, they plan to host a conference at the Sorbonne
about Aktion 1005, the Nazi's attempts to erase evidence of the mass murder of Jews.
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 2004 by leaders in the French Catholic and Jewish communities.
Its primary initiative is to locate the sites of mass grave
Mass grave
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple number of human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. There is no strict definition of the minimum number of bodies required to constitute a mass grave, although the United Nations defines a mass grave as a burial site which...
s of Jewish victims of the Nazi mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
, in Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
and Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
. YIU is led by Father Patrick Desbois
Patrick Desbois
Patrick Desbois, born in 1955 in Chalon-sur-Saône, France, is a Roman Catholic priest, head of the Commission for Relations with Judaism of the French Bishops' Conference and Consultant to the Vatican. He is the co-founder and President of Yahad-In Unum....
, a French Catholic Priest whose grandfather was a French soldier deported to the Nazi prison camp
Internment
Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as: "The action of 'interning'; confinement within the limits of a country or place." Most modern usage is about individuals, and there is a distinction...
Rava-Ruska
Rava-Ruska
Rava-Ruska is a city in the Lviv Oblast of western Ukraine.It is located near the border with Poland, opposite the town of Hrebenne. It is located in the Zhovkva Raion at around . The current estimated population is 8,100 ....
, located in a Ukrainian town that borders Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. Its American fundraising branch is the American Friends of Yahad-In Unum.
Leadership
Father Patrick DesboisPatrick Desbois
Patrick Desbois, born in 1955 in Chalon-sur-Saône, France, is a Roman Catholic priest, head of the Commission for Relations with Judaism of the French Bishops' Conference and Consultant to the Vatican. He is the co-founder and President of Yahad-In Unum....
is the Director of the Episcopal Committee for Relations with Judaism. His work on Catholic-Jewish relations has frequently received international recognition; he has received the Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
from French President
President of the French Republic
The President of the French Republic colloquially referred to in English as the President of France, is France's elected Head of State....
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....
and been awarded the Medal of Valor
Medal of Valor
The Medal of Valor is the highest Israeli military decoration.The medal was established in 1970 by the Knesset in an act of law as a replacement for the Hero of Israel military decoration that was awarded during the War of Independence...
by the Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter....
Center, the Roger E. Joseph Prize by Hebrew Union College
Hebrew Union College
The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is the oldest extant Jewish seminary in the Americas and the main seminary for training rabbis, cantors, educators and communal workers in Reform Judaism.HUC-JIR has campuses in Cincinnati, New York, Los Angeles and Jerusalem.The Jerusalem...
, the Humanitarian Award by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Jan Karski
Jan Karski
Jan Karski was a Polish World War II resistance movement fighter and later scholar at Georgetown University. In 1942 and 1943 Karski reported to the Polish government in exile and the Western Allies on the situation in German-occupied Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and...
Award by the American Jewish Committee
American Jewish Committee
The American Jewish Committee was "founded in 1906 with the aim of rallying all sections of American Jewry to defend the rights of Jews all over the world...
, the B'nai B'rith
B'nai B'rith
B'nai B'rith International |Covenant]]" is the oldest continually operating Jewish service organization in the world. It was initially founded as the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith in New York City, on , 1843, by Henry Jones and 11 others....
International Award for Outstanding Contributions to Relations with the Jewish People and the National Jewish Book Award for his 2008 book Holocaust by Bullets (Palgrave-Macmillan). In spring 2009, he received honorary doctorates from Hebrew University and Bar Ilan.
Dr. Richard Prasquier is the Vice-President of the Yahad-In Unum Board. He is the President of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions and a member of the World Jewish Congress
World Jewish Congress
The World Jewish Congress was founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in August 1936 as an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations...
and the International Jewish Committee on Inter-religious Consultations.
David Black is the President of American Friends of Yahad-In Unum. Black is the Associate Vice President for Institutional Advancement for Yeshiva University
Yeshiva University
Yeshiva University is a private university in New York City, with six campuses in New York and one in Israel. Founded in 1886, it is a research university ranked as 45th in the US among national universities by U.S. News & World Report in 2012...
. He is the former director of the JCC
JCC
JCC may refer to:* John Cooper Clarke, Mancunian punk-poet* China Basin Heliport, San Francisco, CA, USA * Jackson Community College* Jamestown Community College* Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research...
in Manhattan and executive director
Executive director
Executive director is a term sometimes applied to the chief executive officer or managing director of an organization, company, or corporation. It is widely used in North American non-profit organizations, though in recent decades many U.S. nonprofits have adopted the title "President/CEO"...
of the Alliance Francaise
Alliance française
The Alliance française , or AF, is an international organisation that aims to promote French language and culture around the world. created in Paris on 21 July 1883, its primary concern is teaching French as a second language and is headquartered in Paris -History:The Alliance was created in Paris...
in New York.
Historical background
In less than two years, from June 1941 until the spring of 1943, an estimated 1.25 million Jews were massacred in the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
by Nazi mobile killing units, or Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
. The Einsatzgruppen rounded up the Jewish populations of the villages and towns they passed through, led them to the country-side and summarily executed them. The victims were buried (many of them still alive) in mass graves. Very little is known about these atrocities because there were so few survivors.
Research
Yahad-In Unum's seeks to find evidence of the massacres on the Eastern frontEastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
and locate the mass graves of Jews killed by the Einsatzgruppen. YIU's objective is to counter the claims of Holocaust deniers who use the lack of official documentation of the murders to make claims about the validity of Holocaust evidence, and to account for the graves that remain undiscovered to pay respect to the dead.
YIU approaches its work on two fronts—archival research and research trips. The archival research is primarily undertaken by PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
and graduate students
Graduate school
A graduate school is a school that awards advanced academic degrees with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate degree...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. The researchers spend several months at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, where they study the Soviet archives of the Extraordinary State Commission of 1944 and the archives from the Einsatzgruppen Trial
Einsatzgruppen Trial
The Einsatzgruppen Trial was the ninth of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S...
at Ludwigsburg
Ludwigsburg
Ludwigsburg is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, about north of Stuttgart city centre, near the river Neckar. It is the largest and primary city of the Ludwigsburg urban district with about 87,000 inhabitants...
, Germany.
After the research is complete, an 11 person team, usually led by Patrick Desbois
Patrick Desbois
Patrick Desbois, born in 1955 in Chalon-sur-Saône, France, is a Roman Catholic priest, head of the Commission for Relations with Judaism of the French Bishops' Conference and Consultant to the Vatican. He is the co-founder and President of Yahad-In Unum....
, travels to Belarus and Ukraine to collect testimonial and forensic evidence
Forensic identification
Forensic identification is the application of forensic science, or "forensics", and technology to identify specific objects from the trace evidence they leave, often at a crime scene or the scene of an accident. Forensic means "for the courts"....
of the murders. Each trip lasts 15–20 days. The team includes a photographer, ballistics expert, translators, drivers, daily report recorders, a witness interviewer and camera operator
Camera operator
A camera operator or cameraman is a professional operator of a film or video camera. In filmmaking, the leading cameraman is usually called a cinematographer, while a cameraman in a video production may be known as a television camera operator, video camera operator, or videographer, depending on...
. During each trip, the team travels from village to village, where they interview and film the surviving eyewitnesses, using testimony of witnesses to discover the locations of the graves. Once the graves are located, the team uses high-tech equipment to obtain forensic evidence that validates the testimonies. When the team returns to Paris, the translated video testimony and the physical evidence is archived.
Publications
In August 2008, Palgrave MacMillanPalgrave Macmillan
Palgrave Macmillan is an international academic and trade publishing company, headquartered in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom and with offices in New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Delhi, Johannesburg. It was created in 2000 when St...
published Holocaust By Bullets, written by Father Desbois about the work of YIU. Father Desbois titled the book after the method the Nazis used to kill their victims. The Jewish Book Council
Jewish Book Council
The Jewish Book Council, founded in 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature. The goal of the council, as stated on its website, is "to promote the reading, writing and publishing of quality English language books of Jewish content in North America". It is the only...
awarded the book the 2008 National Jewish Book Award.
Yahad-In Unum's Future Projects
YIU continues to work in Ukraine and Belarus and plans to expand to RussiaRussia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. They also plan to open a unique research center in Paris, which will feature a unique archival resource center, and the new results from Father Desbois' field research
Field research
Field research is the collection of raw data in natural settings. It helps to reveal the habits and habitats of various organisms present in their natural surroundings...
, including video testimonies and artifacts.
In addition, YIU is planning to bring a special touring exhibit to schools in Ukraine. YIU will also continue the global tour of its educational exhibits, which include trainings and public education
Public education
State schools, also known in the United States and Canada as public schools,In much of the Commonwealth, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, the terms 'public education', 'public school' and 'independent school' are used for private schools, that is, schools...
programs. Finally, they plan to host a conference at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
about Aktion 1005, the Nazi's attempts to erase evidence of the mass murder of Jews.
External links
- Interview with Father Desbois from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuXGNE9GkR8
- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/a-holy-mission-to-reveal-the-truth-about-nazi-death-squads-1690595.html
- http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c39_a9441/News/International.html
- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6346012.ece
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6V8SLyrpb
- http://hunews.huji.ac.il/articles.asp?cat=1&artID=979
- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6346012.ece
- http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/voices/transcript/?content=20071108
- http://www.adl.org/main_Holocaust/Father_Patrick_Desbois.htm
- http://www.consulfrance-newyork.org/spip.php?article855
- http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/tag/father-patrick-desbois/