Yahad - In Unum

“No. 17 July 2011″

Introducing…the new Yahad web site

If you’re reading this issue of the newsletter online, you’ve probably already noticed a new look to the Yahad – In Unum web site.  The new site, now in English, French and Spanish, will be officially launched later this month with the unveiling of, “Broad Daylight” a new database on which village-by-village summary reports of Yahad’s research work can be viewed.  Each village page also includes extracts of videotaped witness interviews and archival records.  In addition to the database, a number of modifications have been made to the web site to make it easier to locate information including trip reports, press articles, Yahadblog and more.

Recent Yahad field investigations

(click highlighted links to read reports)

December 2010 Belarus Grodno May – June 2010 Ukraine Dnepropetrovsk
December 2010 Ukraine Tcherkassy April – May, 2010 Belarus Baranovitchi
December 2010 Ukraine Dnepropetrovsk March 2010 Belarus Baranovitchi
November 2010 Belarus Grodno January 2010 Ukraine Podolia
November 2010 Russia Bryansk December 2009 Russia Smolensk
August 2010 Ukraine Vinnytsia October 2009 Russia Smolensk
July 2010 Poland Lublin August 2009 Belarus Pinsk
June – July 2010 Ukraine Dnepropetrovsk May 2009 Ukraine Ternopil

 

European Union partnership efforts expanding

The European Union, led by its Directorate General for Education and Culture, has been providing increasing support for Yahad’s education and research efforts. In addition to the International Holocaust Symposium in Romania (see story below), specific programs that the EU is helping make possible include the July seminar for European high school teachers at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the September conference on Nazi camps in the former Soviet Union and continuing research into deportation of the Roma to Transnistria during World War II.

Yeshiva University awards honorary doctorate to Father Desbois

In May, Father Desbois received an honorary doctorate at the commencement exercises of Yeshiva University in New York, in recognition of Yahad – In Unum’s ongoing work to identify the mass graves of victims of the Holocaust by bullets. The university is a center for modern Jewish Orthodoxy and has long been a leading voice on behalf of promoting dialogue between the Jewish and Catholic communities. Yeshiva University is one of the places most visited by French Catholic Cardinals Jean Marie Lustiger and by Cardinal Andre Vingt Trois, and a destination to which delegations of Catholic bishops are invited each year.

Romania to host international Holocaust symposium

Yahad will cosponsor the international symposium, “Mass Graves of the Holocaust,” in Bucharest, Romania, at the end of this month with the Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies and the European Union. The symposium follows the commemoration of the 1941 Iaşi Pogrom and the recent discovery of a mass grave by a team of archaeologists and historians from the Wiesel Institute near the town of Popricani. The symposium will bring together scholars of mass killings in Eastern Europe documented by the three sponsoring organizations to discuss the discovery of such sites, the spectrum of victims of these massacres and the legal, social, and ethical implications of the investigation of mass graves in Romania, Russia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and elsewhere in Europe.


ASF German volunteer delegation visits Yahad’s offices

A recent visit to Yahad’s offices in Paris by a delegation of German youths from Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste (Action Reconciliation Service for Peace) was part of the 50th anniversary of the volunteer services organization. ASF offers young Germans the possibility to work on behalf of peace in countries involved in World War II, including several European countries, Israel and the U.S. Volunteer activities include visiting survivors of the Holocaust, working with refugees and homeless people, helping former slave laborers in their old age and working in schools and shelters for children with disabilities. Yahad has its own special connection with ASF: for the past three years, volunteers from the group have worked with the Yahad team in Paris assisting with research and translations of the archival records used in field investigations. The delegation, composed of current and past volunteers, heard from several Yahad team members during their visit about various aspects of the investigative work conducted both on the ground in Eastern Europe and through archival research in Paris, Germany and Washington.

Meet Team Yahad
Each month, we profile one of the dedicated team members who help make the work of Yahad – In Unum possible.
 

Since September, Moritz Rehm has been working full-time at Yahad under ASF’s volunteer program (see article above). The German-born student, fluent in German, French and English, works with Yahad’s team in Paris, researching documents from the German archives, translating and helping to respond to requests for information from the families of Holocaust victims. He says that, as a pacifist, he was drawn to Yahad’s work and the opportunity to serve society through an intercultural organization performing historical educational work about the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. “As a European, three generations after the Second World War, I feel a sense of responsibility to help people clearly understand the reasons behind the exclusion and the crimes of unimaginable horror that occurred and the need to reject prejudice, racism and discrimination.” Moritz is one of 180 young German volunteers working for social and educational organizations around the world this year.

Upcoming public events
París – Symposium with the Sorbonne, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Ecole Normale Superieure and the European Union on Nazi camps in the Soviet Union, September 19-20  

more information

 

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