Holocaust by Bullets: Yahad – In Unum, 10 Years of Investigation

Holocaust By Bullets resized for web

Holocaust  By  Bullets  features  ten  years  of  field  investigations  in  the  former  Soviet  Union  by  Yahad – In  Unum. Yahad – In Unum, founded by French Catholic Priest Father Patrick Desbois, presents its painstaking research in a succinct yet approachable manner that enables the visitor to uncover, step‐by‐step, the crime committed against Jews and Roma by the Nazi killing units.

Known as the “Holocaust by Bullets”, the systematic  killing  of  all  Jews  started  before  the  creation  of  concentration  camps  and  continued  until  WWII‘s end throughout the ex‐Soviet Union from 1942 to 1944.  The exhibit gives viewers a chance to learn about this lesser‐known side of the Holocaust, through eyewitness testimonies, photographs, and maps.  The  exhibit  presents  Yahad’s  identification  of  five  steps  of  the  crime  that  took  place  almost  systematically for every mass killing throughout Eastern Europe leading up to the executions—the arrest, the road, the undressing, the shooting, and after the executions, the looting.

Yahad – In Unum is a Paris-based organization dedicated to collecting testimonies of eyewitnesses, and identifying and documenting sites of mass crimes committed against Jews and Roma by the Germans and their collaborators during World War II in Eastern Europe. Stemming from the initiative of its founder and president, French Catholic priest Father Patrick Desbois, since 2004 the organization has identified over 1,400 execution sites and interviewed close to 4,000 eyewitnesses in 8 countries.

Father Desbois has spent his life researching the Holocaust, fighting antisemitism, and furthering relations between Catholics and Jews. The exhibition focuses on Father Desbois and Yahad – In Unum’s research in Eastern Europe.

The form of genocide detailed by Yahad – In Unum’s exhibition is unlike any other study of genocidal activity ever conducted and presented.

In the exhibition, Yahad – In Unum presents its painstaking 10 years of research in a succinct yet appropriate manner allowing the visitor to uncover, step-by-step, the crime committed against Jews and Roma by the Nazi killing units, their Axis supporters, and local collaborators in Eastern Europe.

Mass killings in places such as Cambodia, Darfur, the Balkans and Syria are modeled after what Yahad’s founder Father Patrick Desbois calls the archetype of these horrors – those village-by-village, on site massacres – perpetrated by the Nazis and their collaborators.

The Florida Holocaust Museum’s Curator of Education & Director of Research Urszula Szczepinska was invited by Yahad – In Unum to create a study guide to be used worldwide in conjunction with the exhibition. Click here to read the entire study guide, available online.