2009 educational outreach activities
1. Bundestag event
A youth group organized by the Bundestag was welcomed by Yahad – In Unum at the College of Bernardins in Paris, January 23, 2009, for a conference with Father Desbois on the Holocaust by bullets and a discussion with Simone Veil.
Eighty young people: 10 from France, 55 from Germany and 10 from Poland and other European countries spent a week studying the German past. The theme for the 2009 youth meeting was, “Victims of national socialism and the Second World War.” The trip reaffirmed the commitment to prevent the past from falling into oblivion and that anti-Semitism and racism must be resolutely opposed based on knowledge of the past.
The host of the 2009 event was Professor Norbert Lammert, President of the Bundestag, and the keynote speaker for the ceremony was Professor Horst Köhler, President of Germany. The principal partner for the event was the Memorial Center of Oradour-sur-Glane.
After their visit to Oradour-sur-Glane, the Bundestag youth were welcomed in Paris by Yahad – In Unum where they were enlightened about the Holocaust in the East and the mass murders committed by the Third Reich during the war. At the College of Bernardins, following opening comments from Bishop Beau and a historical introduction by Professor Edouard Husson, Father Desbois made a presentation on the Holocaust by bullets in Eastern Europe. The symbolic meeting was honored by the presence of Simone Veil who engaged in a dialogue with the young people, calling on them to never forget the crimes of the past. The discussion was concluded by Dr. Richard Prasquier, CRIF’s president and vice president of Yahad – In Unum.
2. Opening of CERRESE
Yahad-In Unum, the association chaired by Father Patrick Desbois, and the Sorbonne University officially opened a new Resource Center in Paris, October 15, 2009, dedicated to advancing the research on Nazi mass executions of Jews and Roma/Gypsies in Eastern Europe during World War II, sometimes referred to as “The Holocaust by Bullets.”
The Resource Center, the first of its kind in Europe focusing on the Eastern Holocaust, provides researchers access to Yahad-In Unum’s investigations, including video testimony collected in the field, books about the Holocaust in Eastern Europe written in different languages and archival material, including that provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The video stored at the Resource Center includes over 1,700 testimonials of those who witnessed the killings in the Ukraine and Belarus.
Concurrent with the opening in Paris, Yahad-In Unum made available to the public and the Holocaust Memorial Museum its collection of 1,700 video testimonials and photographs collected by the association after more than six years of research.
Among those joining Father Desbois at the inauguration were Sorbonne President Georges Molinié, Sara Bloomfield, Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Catherine Vieu-Charier, deputy to the Mayor of Paris, Stéphane Chmelewsky, Counselor for Religious Affairs, French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, Deidre Berger, Director of the American Jewish Committee in Berlin, Philippe Allouche, Director of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Professor Alexandr Kruglov, a renowned historian from the Ukraine, Dr. Richard Prasquier, President of the CRIF and Vice-President of Yahad – In Unum, Paul Shapiro, Director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies and Professor Edouard Husson of the Sorbonne, Chairman of the Resource Center’s scientific committee.
3. Symposium 1005
June 15-16, 2009, Yahad – In Unum, in partnership with the University of Paris IV – Sorbonne, the College of Bernardins and the Holocaust Memorial Museum of Washington, held an international conference in Paris on “Operation 1005: measures implemented by the Nazis to erase all traces of mass murder committed in Central and Eastern Europe between 1942 and 1944.” This was the first time the topic was the subject of a conference anywhere in the world.
Operation 1005 was the code name for the Nazi’s vast and secret enterprise to destroy evidence of the implementation of its plan to exterminate European Jews during the Second World War.
The conference was based on the availability of unpublished archival resources as well as recent scientific contributions on the issue. Among other questions, it focused on the decision process that led to the implementation of this campaign to erase traces of the crime and included studies of cases and locations where Operation 1005 was implemented, both in camps and ghettos as well as outside of their enclosures. It also included an analysis of Sonderkommando 1005, uprisings, attempted escapes and sabotage of Operation 1005. The technique used by the Nazis to remove the bodies before turning over an area to another party was explored and witness and survivor testimonies were extensively reviewed. After discussing postwar prosecution, the conference looked at the field of comparative studies to focus, finally, on an analysis of the relationship between Operation 1005 and Holocaust denial.
The conference was conducted through simultaneous translation in four languages: French, English, German and Russian. Twenty-five participants from around the world, including the United States, Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Germany were able to share the fruits of their respective research.