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Father Patrick Desbois
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations hosted Father Patrick Desbois, founder of Yahad-In Unum, for a discussion about his discovery and identification of more than 900 previously unknown mass grave sites of nearly 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews and the expansion of his research into Belarus, Russia and Poland.
Father Patrick Desbois is secretary to the French Conference of Bishops for relations with Judaism, advisor to the Cardinal-Archbishop of Lyon and advisor to the Vatican on the Jewish religion. He is the grandson of a deportee to The Rawa Ruska camp and is driven by this legacy to investigate the mass murder of Eastern European Jews by the Nazis during World War II. Since January 2004, Father Desbois has been organizing research journeys to the Ukraine to locate and study mass graves of Jews killed by the Einsatzgruppen. Father Desbois and his team record the testimonies of the last witnesses, locate the graves and collect evidence. His extraordinary work to preserve the memory of Ukraine’s former Jewish community and to advance understanding of the crimes committed has received international media attention in, Le Monde, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, TIME Magazine, and NBC Nightly News.
Bar Ilan University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem have awarded him Honorary Doctorates and he has been honored by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith and the National Jewish Book Award for his 2008 book, Holocaust by Bullets. In June 2008, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France named Father Desbois Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur for his research work on the Holocaust.
Father Patrick Desbois
Alan Solow and Father Patrick Desbois
Father Patrick Desbois and Malcolm Hoenlein
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