Filed under: Development Update | Tags: Aspen, campaign, davenport, education, fundraising, Hamptons, jewish center of the hamptons, media, Philadelphia, press interviews, public venue, russian language classes, sixth and i synagogue, Speaking tour
Father Desbois began his speaking tour of the United States this week with a talk at the Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington D.C.
He will spend the upcoming month giving press interviews, taking Russian language classes in preparation for his upcoming investigative trips there, speaking at various venues across the States (including Aspen, Davenport, Philadelphia, and the Hamptons), and staying in contact with our supporters.
The purpose of the tour is two-fold: it is an education campaign and a fundraising campaign. We hope to raise public awareness about this less well-known side of the Holocaust, as well as raise funds so that Father Desbois can make the important investigation trips he has planned to Russia.
Tomorrow (Saturday, August 1st), Father Desbois will be speaking at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton, Long Island, New York at 11am.
Then, at 7:45pm, Father Desbois will speak again at the Hamptons Synagogue in Westhampton.
If you have any questions or requests, feel free to post a comment and we will get back to you right away.
Filed under: Historical Background | Tags: ancestors, documents, family history, family story, Jewish community, Kamanets-Podolski, Kamianets-Podilskyi, relatives, requests, Research, the Ukraine
A Familial Connection
When possible, we like to include on our blog any personal relations we are aware of with the towns our team visits. One of our purposes at YIU is to provide those who have roots in these villages with a more complete history of the land their family came from. In return, we welcome their personalization of our research.
One of our interns, Lauren Meyerowitz had family in Kamanets-Podolski. Our team actually visited this village and interviewed witnesses there.
She writes, “my paternal great-grandfather left this village for New York in 1903, when it was still part of the Russian empire. I believe he went back in 1911 to visit and then returned to the U.S. again. I have no information about why he migrated or who he left behind. He died relatively young, in 1936, when my grandfather- his son- was just a teenager. I do not know if he was unaware of the Soviet pogroms or the fate of any family members left behind. Perhaps he had siblings who, even if they survived earlier pogroms, would not have survived the Nazi massacres during the Holocaust.”
Kamenets-Podolski
The town was mentioned in the 1961 trial against Adolf Eichmann, and, for this reason, there exists a more extensive historical record of the Holocaust there than for other villages across Eastern Europe.
According to the documents left from the trial, “23,600 Jews were killed [in Kamenets-Podolski] in three days.” The documents also contain the eyewitness testimony of Mr. Gordon, who watched German SS travel from house to house in search of Jews, and then heard to the sound of machine guns throughout the night.
Town History
Kamenets-Podolski, (Кам’янець-Подільський in Ukrainian; Каменец-Подольский in Russian; קאַמענעץ in Yiddish, also written Kamyanets-Podilskiyy ) had a significant Jewish population throughout its history. The town has been under many rulers, including Turks and Poles. It came under Russian rule with the 1793 partition of Poland. It was briefly occupied by Austria-Hungary, and was eventually ceded to the Soviet Union after the Russian empire’s demise. It remained part of the USSR until 1990, when the town became part of newly-established Ukraine.
Jewish Population
Despite hardship and pogroms, the Jewish population maintained a strong presence in Kamenets-Podolski for centuries. According to the database JewishGen, the Jewish population in 1900 was around 16,000. Between 1918 and 1920, intensified pogroms and Soviet persecution drove many from the land. The Jewish population that remained was almost entirely wiped out by the Nazis during World War II.
According to Holocaust scholar Martin Gilbert, of the 23,6000 Jews massacred in the town, 14,000 were Hungarian Jews whom the Nazi-allied Hungarians had deported to the village. Their Hungarian citizenship was in question because they were Jews from areas in Carpathian Ruthenia and Czechslovakia which Hungary had recently annexed. The remaining 9,000 murdered were Polish and Ukrainian Jews denizens of the village
Today, a small Jewish community perseveres in Kamenets-Podolski.
If you also had family in the village, please share with us your own history. If you have any requests for a story on a town or village, please let us know.
Filed under: Development Update | Tags: coverage, documentary, evidence, Father Desbois, Hitler's Hidden Holocaust, interviews, mission, National Geographic, news coverage, photos
Father Desbois will play a prominent role in an upcoming documentary being released by National Geographic.
Set to be broadcast on Sunday, August 2nd, Hitler’s Hidden Holocaust will feature rare documentary evidence, including photos and video taken by the Einsatzgruppen, as well as interviews from survivors.
Our quest to interview eyewitnesses and record their stories will provide a compelling conclusion to the documentary, linking the past with our own modern Ukrainian quest to understand it. Father Desbois will discuss his mission to document and record the events of 70 years ago.
Here is a link about the documentary.
We look forward to watching the finished product on August 2nd at 10pm. Expect a reminder about the documentary in the week before its release.
Filed under: Development Update | Tags: CBC, channel, clips, Dateline NBC, discussion board, documentary, facebook, media, news coverage, video, youtube. yahad-in unum
Check out our Youtube channel here.
This channel is a way to collect and promote videos of Father Desbois. You can find videos of speeches he has given, clips from his documentary, and interviews from news programs like CBC and Dateline NBC. For those who have never met Father Desbois, these videos are a special opportunity to listen to him speak about his work, and to see his passion and dedication.
The Youtube channel also helps our organization promote Father Desbois’ work. It was accepted into the Youtube Nonprofit program, which will allow us to add a free Google checkout “Donate” option. Also, by subscribing to other nonprofit channels, our channel will pop up on other channels and people will be directed to it.
We also have a Facebook page, which you can find here if you have an account.
The Facebook page is another way for people to connect with our organization and to learn about Father Desbois’ latest activity. Not only can you find Youtube videos on the page, but there are postings of Father Desbois’ speaking engagements, and news coverage as well. There is also a photo section with an album dedicated to Desbois’ fieldwork and speaking tours. And for those who wish to discuss Yahad-In Unum’s mission, or just keep in touch with the organization, there is a discussion board as well.
Check out the “Links” page on the left-hand side beneath “About us” for more information.
Filed under: Methodology | Tags: ballistics, ballistics expert, barrel, book, Cartridge, death, evidence, Execution, GPS, Holocaust by Bullets, industrial, Khativa, massacre, proof, team, witness
The bullet cartridges that German executioners left behind nearly 70 years ago are crucial evidence that a massacre has occurred at a particular site. Besides using archival evidence and matching eyewitness testimonies to identify grave sites, our team always includes a ballistics expert to identify cartridges in the soil.
Father Desbois and the team’s ballistics expert searching for bullet cartridges
Why is it so important that we find cartridges at grave sites? There’s a lot of controversy about digging up the graves of the dead, and rightfully so. Our team rarely disturbs the bodies of the slain, and when we have, it’s done with the blessing of an accompanying rabbi. In many instances, the corpses are no longer there: they were dug up and cremated in the Nazi’s plan to erase the evidence of their crimes, known as Aktion 1005. The cartridges from German guns are often the only physical evidence our team finds.
In his award-winning book about the expeditions, Holocaust by Bullets, Father Desbois describes the first instance he came across the cartridges of the Nazi executioners, in Khvativ, Ukraine:
“How do you know it’s a German cartridge?” I asked him. “Look,” [Micha, the ballistics expert] explained. “A Russian cartridge has a very wide base but not German ones. German ones also have a manufacturing mark.” As he was speaking, he grabbed hold of a cloth and rubbed the base of the cartridge. One could see a mark and date of manufacture: 1938. The circles [with a metal detector] began again, of 300, 350, and then 200 meters. The dance went on for hours. Three hundred times I heard: “Niemetska Ghilse [German cartridge]!”
“A bullet, a Jew. A Jew, a cartridge,” said Otto Ohlendorf, head of Einsatzgruppe D at the Nuremberg trial for the Einsatzgruppen. As Father Desbois writes, “The Germans did not use more than one bullet to kill a Jew. Three hundred cartridges, 300 bullets, 300 people executed here. My sense of unease did not go away. No Russian cartridge. The proof of genocide was so flagrant and so real.”
The team enters the locations where cartridges have been found onto a GPS to reaffirm the locations of killing sites. Cartridges are gathered and organized according to their type–what kind of metal they’re for, what type of gun. Were the killers using Walther pistols or Mauser rifles? Machine gun pistols or heavy machine guns? This is matched against the testimony of the witnesses, who may imitate the sound the guns made. Is the cartridge in good condition or is it thoroughly rusted? This tells us how late in the war the massacre occurred: late in the war, the Germans ran out of high-quality, rust-proof metal. Photos are taken. The team uses a catalog of equipment that the Germans used during World War II as a reference.
Every item the team finds has its own dark history. Each cartridge is the witness of one death, each cartridge carries a terrible story, and as Father Desbois writes, it gives the rusted remains an eerie aura.
Eyewitnesses are invaluable. The hundreds of people we interview can recount what happened in a way that forensic science never could. They give color and reality to this dark period, and they tell our team where the massacred occurred. But the discovery of a cartridge makes the evidence of massacre incontrovertible fact: the cartridge is the cold, tangible proof of death. Where we cannot and should not dig up bodies, we find the last remains of those killed in the industrial instruments of the killers.
Filed under: Development Update | Tags: Aspen, Father Desbois, Hamptons, Holocaust Archives, JCC, New York, Philadelphia, Russian Tutor, Speaking tour, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington
Starting in late July, Father Desbois will travel in the U.S. in order to engage his American audience and to lay the groundwork for his upcoming research trips.
In New York, Father Desbois will study Russian with a private tutor to better prepare for his interviews with Russian eyewitnesses. Currently, Father Desbois relies on a translator while doing field work; he hopes that by advancing his language skills he can listen more effectively, thus further enabling the eyetwitnesses to reveal the truth.
He will also travel to Washington D.C. to research the German and Soviet archives of Ukraine and Belarus at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Finally, in order to raise awareness of Yahad-In Unum’s mission, Father Desbois will travel across the country to speak with members of the community. He will discuss his book, his experience in the field and present video coverage of his expeditions.
Father Desbois giving a presentation at the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding sponsored lecture at Sacred Heart University.
If you are interested in hosting Father Desbois in your community, please feel free to contact Stephanie Bleyer at s.bleyer@yahadinunum.com or 917.653.8499. Here’s a clip that you can preview of Father Desbois.
Here is a list of his scheduled engagements thus far:
July 28th: Washington DC; 6th and I Synagogue, 7 pm.
(Here‘s an interview of Father Desbois anticipating this event.)
August 1: East Hampton, Jewish Center of the Hamptons; 10am, kiddish to follow.
August 1st: West Hampton Beach, Hamptons Synagogue, 7pm.
August 2nd: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Keynote speaker at the opening session of the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, the Sheraton Philadelphia Center City Hotel; 7 pm
August 4th: Aspen, Coloardo; JCC Chabad, Hotel Jerome; 5:30 pm.
Filed under: Development Update | Tags: Archives, Eastern Europe, Holocaust, Holocaust Archives, Holocaust Education, Partnership, Research, Researchers, Sorbonne, University
This just in from Paris on YIU’s partnership with the Sorbonne and the opening of our research center:
Office of the President of Paris-Sorbonne University
Professor Georges Molinié, President of Paris-Sorbonne University and Father Patrick Desbois have agreed on a partnership that will 1) create a resource center on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, and 2) provide research facilities and teaching on the history of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
The opening the Holocaust archives to researches on October 15, 2009 completes a partnership between Sorbonne University and Father Desbois begun in 2006, which took form most notably in a series of seminars at Sorbonne University.
Professor Edouard Husson was named the Scientific Coordinator of the project, in charge of relations between Yahad-In Unum and the University. By September of this year Mr. Husson will submit a series of proposals in order to accomplish two goals:
· Establish a council of international researchers
· Propose the basis for an interdisciplinary curriculum at Paris-Sorbonne, based around the history of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
-Paris, June 15, 2009
Filed under: Field Report | Tags: Civilians, Eastern Europe, Grimalov, Local Cooperation, Local Involvement, Mass Murder, Nazis, Pogram, Ritual, Ternopil, Wehrmacht, Witnesses
The involvement of local populations in the Nazis’ extermination plan is always a significant question. To what extent did non-Jews resist the removal of Jewish rights, the scheduled deportations, the impromptu massacres? If local populations didn’t resist, were they actively involved? Father Desbois’ expedition to Ternopil brings to light an important instance of local cooperation with the Nazis.
In Ternopil, the Nazis took advantage of that longstanding Eastern European ritual–the pogrom–and organized their own, more deadly pogrom. Father Desbois writes:
“We managed to find witnesses who would agree to speak about pogroms: four people recounted the execution of nearly a third of the Jewish population of the village of Grimaïlov… They were instigated and, in part, led by the newly arrived Wehrmacht… The [Wehrmacht] encouraged the civil Ukrainian population to take part in the shootings..”
Pond in Grimalov, site of the pogrom.
Stanislav refused to participate in the pogrom.
If the Nazis created the most organized machine for mass murder that has ever existed, they also used a more unscripted method that had existed for hundreds of years.
Filed under: Field Report | Tags: Annex, Camp Buildings, Camps, Civilian, Concentration Camps, Execution, Graves, Kamianky, Local Involvement, Ozerna, Stoupki, Village
As we further our investigations, we have begun to develop a better understanding of the way in which the camps were run.
1) In each village or town, in addition to a main camp, there often were one or two small annexes to the camp. These camps were not separate entities; rather, they were integrated into village life.
For example, at the camp at Ozerna we found:
- A central camp. This camp held the majority of the town’s male Jewish prisoners. These prisoners mainly worked construction on the village’s roads
- A women’s camp annex: This camp was small building in which women prisoners lived. Their main duty was to wash the clothes of the male prisoners and camp guards.
- “Freilager”: This was an unguarded building where Jewish “specialists” (craftsmen and doctors) worked. All the village’s residents could consult these specialists for free and without constraint.
2) These Camps existed in plain site:
Everyone knew these camps existed, and nearly everyone had access to them. We spoke to Dmitry who remembers bringing vegetables to the cooks at Kamianky kitchen. We also spoke to Mikhail, who remembers being treated by the doctor prisoners of the Freilager camp.
3) Many of the camps we researched were originally worker camps but later became extermination camps. Mikhail (1927) and Maria (1935) at Kamianki, and Iakov (1922) at Stoupki witnessed the execution of the last prisoners from these camps. All three recounted that the victims were undressed in the camp buildings, then, in groups, brought across a row of guards to the graves where their executioners awaited them. The graves that we located on the site were of victims of both hunger and execution.
Filed under: Historical Background | Tags: Aktion 1005, Burn, Cover, Cover Up, Cremation, Holocaust, Jews, June 15, Massarcre, Nuremburg, Nuremburg Trials, Operation 1005, Paul Blobel, Pyres, Symposium, Testimony, Victims
Operation 1005 was the Nazis’ large-scale campaign to cover up evidence of their massacre against the Jews.
A common tactic the Nazis used was to exhume the graves of their victims and burn the bodies inside. Several of the testimonies we have secured thus far confirm the Nazis’ attempted cover-up of the Holocaust by Bullets. Stefania recalls the Nazis ordering village residents to “arrange [the Jewish bodies] like pyres between two layers of wood,” so they could douse them with gasoline and burn them. Iaroslav watched as the Jews were forced carry a log to their own grave; the Nazis then used the logs as kindler as they burned their victims alive.
Paul Blobel, commander of Operation 1005, outlined its gruesome details at the Nuremberg trials. You can read his testimony here .
Paul Blobel, commander of Atkion 1005, on trial
If you are interested in learing further about Operation 1005, please refer to our website, where we have information about the symposium we will be holding the topic on June 15.
Bodies stacked on a pyre to be burned
Filed under: Historical Background | Tags: Archives, Camps, Eyewitness, Forgotten, German, Holocaust, Nuremburg Trials, Records, Research, Soviet, Soviet Commission, Testimony, Verification, War Crimes, Yad Vasehem
You may have heard us refer to the German and Soviet archives before. These archives are incredibly important to both history and to our work, so we thought we might take a moment to explain them a little more in-depth.
After World War II, the Germans and Soviets created commissions to investigate and document Nazi war crimes. These commissions created reports that offer one of the few formal records of the atrocities that occurred during the war. These reports help verify the Holocaust’s existence, and they also serve as a main source of research for
Holocaust historians (including our own historians before we go on our trips.)
- Soviet Commission
Unfortunately, these records are not all-encompassing. Many of the mass shootings we have found and continue to find go unmentioned in them. In this trip alone, we have already investigated eight camps that are completely left out of them.
So, there you have the urgency and importance of our work. If the archives do not mention the mass-shootings, and if the eye-witnesses to the shootings pass on before we interview them, it will be almost impossible (or at least far harder) to acquire the evidence we need to include these shootings in historical record. As a consequence, these massacres of innocents might be entirely forgotten, and their lives will go un-honored by future generations.
In case you want to learn more about these archives, you might want to visit this interesting site our team found: http://www.seligman.org.il/kretinga_esc.html. You can also see copies of them in person at Yad Vashem, or take a look online at their digital archives.
A Page that Lists the Names of the Deceased Found in the Soviet Archives
Filed under: Field Report | Tags: Camps, Concentration Camps, Father Desbois, Galicia, Kamianki, Maksymovka, Novosilka, Romanove, Selo, Skalat, Stoupki, Stoupki 2, Ternopil
In the most recent report from our team in the field, Father Desbois makes a groundbreaking discovery.
The massacres of the East have always posed notorious difficulties for researchers because of the lack of physical evidence available. Unlike in the West, where the Holocaust was carried out by a highly organized and visible infrastructure of concentration camps, railroads, and factories, there was thought to be no permanent structures in the East that would testify to the deaths of 1.5 million Jews.
But Father Desbois has found eight camps in Ternopil that were necessary for the Nazis to build in order to handle the region’s large Jewish population.
One of the buildings in the village camp at Skalat:
The Discovery of the Camps
“[We are conducting our] investigations in the Ternopil region,” writes Father Desbois. “This visit is mainly focused on searching for camps designed for the very large Jewish population in the region. After a little less than ten days, we investigated eight camps (Maksymovka, Romanove, Selo, Kamianki, Stoupki, Stoupki 2, Skalat, Novosilka), not one of which was mentioned in the German or Soviet archives, and we questioned more than thirty people who were witnesses to them.”
How the Camps Were Run
“… It seems certain to us that these camps are based around the railroad line and the route connecting Temopil to Vinnitsia, essential to the German war effort. They are distinguishable by several recurring and characteristic aspects: the Jewish prisoners of the camp were systematically exterminated inside the camps. The majority of the detainees are men, Jewish women being kept in particular buildings and having to look after the affairs of prisoners and guards. In many cases, the camp is placed under the guard of Jewish police.”
In the village of Veliki Gloubotchek, Emelian shows the private garden in which there rest today more than 300 Jews who were detained in the camp of the village, shot, and then burned.
Involvement of the Local Population
“The bodies of victims buried in pits almost always underwent exhumation and cremation organized by the Nazi authorities (Operation 1005). Ultimately, our investigation brought to light the complete lack of efforts to hold executions and cremation of the secret corpses: we found two of the many villagers in the Kamianki camp, one ordered to carry the wood necessary to burn the bodies, the other to take out the bodies with a farm hook. In the village of Veliki Gloubotchek, the villagers were ordered to gather the bodies of escaped Jews, shot on the way to execution, and to pile the cadavers with wood in preparation for the cremation of the bodies…”
Father Desbois’ discovery of the camps in Ternopil is groundbreaking: he is providing the first-ever instance of documentation of the camps of Ternopil.
Filed under: Historical Background | Tags: Austro-Hungarian Empire, Concentration Camps, Eastern Europe, Father Desbois, Galicia, History, Jewish Population, Jewish Records Indexing Project, Poland, Polish Partitions, Ternopil, Ukraine, World War II
Father Desbois is currently recording testimony in the Ternopil region of the Ukraine. But where is Ternopil and how is it connected with the rest of Eastern Europe?
Ternopil is part of a region of Eastern Europe known as Galicia, a province that stretched across what is now Poland and the Ukraine. It is a region with a rich and complex history, and it once held a large Jewish population, among dozens of other ethnic groups and cultures. Ternopil sits on the eastern end of Galicia.
The region retained its complex diversity until World War II, when Galicia’s population was relocated, and its Jews sent to concentration camps or massacred near the villages they lived in. Father Desbois is now investigating the last remnants of the ancient Jewish communities of Ternopil.
Galicia was originally formed as a province of the Austrian empire (which later became the Austrian-Hungarian Empire), through the Polish Partitions. The Austrian-Hungarian was dissolved at the end of World War I, and Galicia consequently became part of Poland; in 1939, it became part of the Soviet Union. It is now split between the Ukraine and Poland.
Map of Galicia During the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Undoubtedly, some of our readers have ancestors who came from this region; if someone Jewish in your family came from from Poland, there’s a good chance they emigrated from Galicia. You can conduct your own research through the Jewish Records Indexing Project.
You can also search through the Vital Records for Galician Towns to find the location of records that pertain to each town in Galicia during the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
For more historical background on Jewish life in Galicia, you can read Piotr Wrobel’s article The Jews of Galicia under Austrian-Polish Rule, 1867-1918.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Hello everyone, this is our first report from our April expedition to the Ukraine. We want to keep you as informed as possible throughout this process, so we thought we might let you know what we hope to achieve over the course of our trip:
We know from prior research that Jewish worker camps were prevalent in Galicia. Our primary goal of this trip is to locate these camps, the locations of the graves in which its victims were buried, and to interview the eye-witnesses. Please check in with us soon to stay updated on what we discover.
