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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Stansilav told us that the Wehrmacht offered their guns to young Ukrainian locals, and that many Ukrainians did in fact participate in shooting 500 Jews lined up at the side of the pond in Grimalov. Stanislav refused to participate in the pogrom.

In Vishnevets, Mikhail watched as the soldiers of the Wehrmacht (the German army) locked fifty Jews in a cave and forced them to take part in a macbre game. They were made to attack each other: each man who found himself in a corner of the cave was attacked by the others. The last man alive was shot by the soldiers.

Markian saw fifty Jews forced to get into the lake in which they were executed at Skalat.

Stefania watched as her father and the other inhabitants of Kamianky were forced, for three days, to dig up the bodies, with farm hooks, to “arrange them like pyres between two layers of wood”. The Germans poured gasoline on the bodies and burned them. “Despite the unbearable smell, those being commanded were not allowed to hold up a handkerchief to breathe,” she said. 

Vladimir and Dmitri, Ukrainian Gentiles, both saw one of the temporary camps from the inside. Vladimir, for finding a German that he had to transport to another town; Dmitri and his father, like ten other peasants, had to bring vegetables several times a week to the camp’s kitchen and take out the camp’s waste.

Lastly, two tales of escape: Markian said that a group of partisans attacked the camp at Skalat. Many of the Jewish workers succeeded in fleeing. Some prisoners also escaped a truck that was bringing them to execution near Zboriv. The Germans were forced to double the number of guards at the back of their trucks. 

If you have any questions about our work in Ternopil, please comment and we will do our best to answer. Father Desbois will be moving on, and this is our last post about Ternopil.

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

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.

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:

1. 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
2. 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.
3. “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.